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DISCOURSES. 



DISCOURSES 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 



BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES BOWEN. 

1839. 




Entered according to the act of Congress in the year 1832, 
by Charles" Bovven, 
in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



CAME RIDGE I 
E. W. METCALF AND COMPANY, 

Printers to the University. 



TO 

THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY, 

O WHICH IT HAS BEEN MY HAPPINESS 
FOR MANY YEARS TO MINISTER, 
THIS VOLUME 
RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY 
INSCRIBED. 

W. E. C. 



Errata. 



Page 30, line 2, for we that, read that we 
" 125, " 10 ; 14 iniquities, w fathers 



CONTENTS. 



DISCOURSE I. 
Evidences of Christianity 1 
Romans i. 16. — I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. 

DISCOURSE II. 

Character of Christ . . . . . 89 

Matthew xvii. 5. — This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased. 

DISCOURSE III. 
Christianity a Rational Religion . . .113 
Romans i. 16. — I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. 

DISCOURSE IV. 

Honor due to All Men 150 

1 Peter ii. 17. — Honor all men. 

DISCOURSE V. 
Self-Denial . . • . . . 167 

Matthew xvi. 24. — Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any 
man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his 
cross, and follow me. 



viii 



CONTENTS. 



DISCOURSE VI. 

Self-Denial 185 

Matthew xvi. 24. — Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any 
man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his 
cross, and follow me. 

DISCOURSE VII. 

The Imitableness of Christ's Character . . 197 

1 Peter ii. 21. — Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an exam- 
ple, that ye should follow his steps. 

DISCOURSE VIII. 

The Evil of Sin . . . . . . 213 

Proverbs xiv. 9. — Fools make a mock at sin. 

DISCOURSE IX. 

Immortality . . . . . . . 231 

2 Timothy i. 10. — Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished 
death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through 
the gospel. 

DISCOURSE X. 

Love to Christ ...... 246 

Ephesians vi. 24. — Grace be with all them that love our Lord 
Jesus Christ in sincerity. 

DISCOURSE XI. 

Love to Christ . . . . . , . 262 

Ephesians -vi. 24. — Grace be with all them that love our Lord 
Jesus Christ in sincerity. 



DISCOURSE I. 



ROMANS i. 16. 

T AM NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 



PART I. 

These words of Paul are worthy of his resolute and 
disinterested spirit. In uttering them he was not an 
echo of the multitude, a servile repeater of estab- 
lished doctrines. The vast majority around him were 
ashamed of Jesus. The cross was then coupled with 
infamy. Christ's name was scorned as a malefactor's, 
and to profess his religion was to share his disgrace. 
Since that time what striking changes have occurred ! 
The cross now hangs as an ornament from the neck of 
beauty. It blazes on the flags of navies, and the 
standards of armies. Millions bow before it in ad- 
oration, as if it were a shrine of the divinity. Of 
course, the temptation to be ashamed of Jesus is very 
much diminished. Still it is not wholly removed. 
Much of the homage now paid to Christianity is out- 
ward, political, worldly, and paid to its corruptions 
much more than to its pure and lofty spirit ; and ac- 
cordingly its conscientious and intrepid friends must 
1 



2 



DISCOURSE I. 



not think it a strange thing to be encountered with 
occasional coldness or reproach. We may still be 
tempted to be ashamed of our religion , by being 
thrown among skeptics, who deny and deride it. We 
may be tempted to be ashamed of the simple and ra- 
tional doctrines of Christ, by being brought into con- 
nexion with narrow zealots, who enforce their dark and 
perhaps degrading peculiarities as essential to salvation. 
We may be tempted to be ashamed of his pure, meek, 
and disinterested precepts, by being thrown among the 
licentious, self-seeking, and vindictive. Against these 
perils we should all go armed. To be loyal to truth 
and conscience under such trials is one of the signal 
proofs of virtue. No man deserves the name of Chris- 
tian, but he who adheres to his principles amidst the 
unbelieving, the intolerant, and the depraved. 

" I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." So said 
Paul. So would I say. Would to God that I could 
catch the spirit as well as the language of the Apostle, 
and bear my testimony to Christianity with the same 
heroic resolution. Do any ask why I join in this at- 
testation to the gospel ? Some of my reasons I pro- 
pose now to set before you ; and in doing so I ask the 
privilege of speaking, as the Apostle has done, in the 
first person ; of speaking in my own name, and of 
laving open my own mind in the most direct language. 
There are cases, in which the ends of public discourse 
may be best answered by the frank expression of indi- 
vidual feeling; and this mode of address, when adopted 
with such views, ought not to be set down to the ac- 
count of egotism. 



DISCOURSE I. 



3 



I proceed to state the reasons why I am not asham- 
ed of the gospel of Christ ; and I begin with one so 
important, that it will occupy the present discourse. 

I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it 
is true. This is my first reason. The religion is true, 
and no consideration but this could induce me to de- 
fend it. I adopt it, not because it is popular, for false 
and ruinous systems have enjoyed equal reputation : 
nor because it is thought to uphold the order of society, 
for I believe that nothing but truth can be permanently 
useful. It is true ; and I say this not lightly, but aftei 
deliberate examination. I am not repeating the ac- 
cents of the nursery. I do not affirm the truth of 
Christianity, because I was so taught before i could in- 
quire, or because I was brought up in a community 
pledged to this belief. It is not unlikely, that my faith 
and zeal will be traced by some to these sources ; and 
believing such imputations to be groundless, fidelity to 
the cause of truth binds me to repel them. The cir- 
cumstance of having been born and educated under 
Christianity, so far from disposing me to implicit faith, 
has often been to me the occasion of serious distrust of 
our religion. On observing how common it is for men 
of all countries and names, whether Christians, Jews, or 
Mahometans, to receive the religion of their fathers, I 
have again and again asked myself, whether I too was 
not a slave, whether I too was not blindly walking in 
the path of tradition, and yielding myself as passively 
as others to an hereditary faith. I distrust and fear 
the power of numbers and of general opinion over my 
judgment ; and few things incite me more to repel 
a doctrine than intolerant attempts to force it on my 



4 



DISCOURSE I. 



understanding. Perhaps my Christian education and 
connexions have inclined me to skepticism, rather than 
bowed my mind to authqrity. 

It may still be said, that the pride and prejudices and 
motives of interest, which belong to my profession as a 
Christian minister, throw a suspiciousness over my 
reasoning and judgment on the present subject. I reply, 
that to myself I seem as free from biases of this kind, 
as the most indifferent person. I have no priestly 
prepossessions. I know and acknowledge the corrup- 
tions and perversions of the ministerial office from the 
earliest age of the church. I reprobate the tyran- 
ny which it exercises so often over the human 
mind. I recognise no peculiar sanctity in those who 
sustain it. I think, then, that I come to the examina- 
tion of Christianity with as few blinding partialities 
as any man. I indeed claim no exemption from error ; 
I ask no implicit faith in my conclusions; I care not 
how jealously and thoroughly my arguments are sifted. 
I only ask, that I may not be prejudged as a servile 
or interested partisan of Christianity. I ask that I 
may be heard as a friend of truth, desirous to aid my 
fellow creatures in determining a question of great and 
universal concern. I appear as the advocate of Chris- 
tianity, solely because it approves itself to my calmest 
reason as a revelation from God, and as the purest, 
brightest light which He has shed on the human mind. 
I disclaim all other motives. No policy, no vassalage 
to opinion, no dread of reproach even from the good, 
no private interest, no desire to uphold a useful su- 
perstition, nothing in short but a deliberate conviction 
of the truth of Christianity, induces me to appear in 



DISCOURSE I. 



5 



its ranks. I should be ashamed of it ? did I not believe 
it true. 

In discussing this subject I shall express my convic- 
tions strongly ; I shall speak of infidelity as a gross and 
perilous error. But in so doing I beg not to be un- 
derstood, as passing sentence on the character of indi- 
vidual unbelievers. I shall show that the Christian 
religion is true, is from God ; but I do not therefore 
conclude, that all who reject it are the enemies of God, 
and are to be loaded with reproach. I would uphold 
the truth without ministering to uncharitableness. The 
criminality, the damnable guilt of unbelief in all imagi- 
nable circumstances, is a position which I think unten- 
able ; and persuaded as I am, that it prejudices the 
cause of Christianity, by creating an antipathy be- 
tween its friends and opposers, which injures both, 
and drives the latter into more determined hostility to 
the truth, I think it worthy of a brief consideration in 
this stage of the discussion. 

I lay it down as a principle, that unbelief, considered 
in itself, has no moral quality, is neither a virtue nor a 
vice, but must receive its character, whether good or 
bad, from the dispositions or motives, which produce 
or pervade it. Mere acts of the understanding are 
neither right nor wrong. When I speak of faith as a 
holy or virtuous principle, I extend the term beyond 
its primitive meaning, and include in it not merely the 
assent of the intellect, but the disposition or temper, 
by which this assent is determined, and which it is 
suited to confirm ; and I attach as broad a signification 
to unbelief, when I pronounce it a crime. The truth 



DISCOURSE I. 



is, that the human mind, though divided by our phi- 
losophy into many distinct capacities, seldom or never 
exerts them separately, but generally blends them in 
one act. Thus in forming a judgment, it exerts the will 
and affections, or the moral principles of our nature, as 
really as the power of thought. Men's passions and 
interests mix with, and are expressed in the decis- 
ions of the intellect. In the Scriptures, which use 
language freely, and not with philosophical strictness, 
faith and unbelief are mental acts of this complex char- 
acter, or joint products of the understanding and heart ; 
and on this account alone, they are objects of approba- 
tion or reproof. In these views, I presume, reflecting 
Christians of every name agree. 

According to these views, opinions cannot be laid 
down as unerring and immutable signs of virtue and 
vice. The very same opinion may be virtuous in one 
man and vicious in another, supposing it, as is very 
possible, to have originated in different states of mind. 
For example, if through envy and malignity I should 
rashly seize on the slightest proofs of guilt in my 
neighbour, my judgment of his criminality would be 
morally wrong. Let another man arrive at the same 
conclusion, in consequence of impartial inquiry and 
love of truth, and his decision would be morally right. 
Still more, according to these views, it is possible for 
the belief of Christianity to be as criminal as unbelief. 
Undoubtedly the reception of a system, so pure in 
spirit and tendency as the gospel, is to be regarded 
in general as a favorable sign. But let a man adopt 
this religion, because it will serve his interest and 
popularity ; let him shut his mind against objections 



DISCOURSE I. 



7 



to it, lest they should shake his faith in a gainful sys- 
tem ; let him tamper with his intellect, and for base and 
selfish ends exhaust its strength in defence of the prev- 
alent faith, and he is just as criminal in believing, as 
another would be in rejecting Christianity under the 
same bad impulses. Our religion is at this moment 
adopted, and passionately defended by vast multitudes, 
on the ground of the very same pride, worldliness, 
love of popularity, and blind devotion to hereditary 
prejudices, which led the Jews and Heathens to reject 
it in the primitive age ; and the faith of the first is as 
wanting in virtue, as was the infidelity of the last. 

To judge of the character of faith and unbelief, we 
must examine the times and the circumstances in which 
they exist. At the first preaching of the gospel, to be- 
lieve on Christ was a strong proof of an upright mind ; 
to enlist among his followers, was to forsake ease, 
honor, and worldly success ; to confess him was an 
act of signal loyalty to truth, virtue, and God. To 
believe in Christ at the present moment has no such 
significance. To confess him argues no moral courage. 
It may even betray a servility and worldliness of mind. 
These remarks apply in their spirit to unbelief. 
At different periods, and in different conditions of 
society, unbelief may express very different states of 
mind. Before we pronounce it a crime, and doom 
it to perdition, we ought to know the circumstances 
under which it has sprung up, and to inquire with can- 
dor whether they afford no palliation or defence. When 
Jesus Christ was on earth, when his miracles were 
wrought before men's eyes, when his voice sounded 
in their ears, when not a shade of doubt could be 



DISCOURSE I. 



thrown over the reality of his supernatural works, 
and not a human corruption had mingled with his 
doctrine, there was the strongest presumption against 
the uprightness and the love of truth of those who 
rejected him. He knew too the hearts and the lives 
of those who surrounded him, and saw distinctly in 
their envy, ambition, worldliness, sensuality, the springs 
of their unbelief ; and accordingly he pronounced it a 
crime. Since that period, what changes have taken 
place ! Jesus Christ has left the world. His miracles 
are events of a remote age, and the proofs of them, 
though abundant, are to many imperfectly unknown ; 
and, what is incomparably more important, his reli- 
gion has undergone corruption, adulteration, disastrous 
change, and its likeness to its founder is in no small de- 
gree effaced. The clear, consistent, quickening truth, 
which came from the lips of Jesus, has been exchang- 
ed for a hoarse jargon and vain babblings. The 
stream, so pure at the fountain, has been polluted and 
poisoned through its whole course. Not only has 
Christianity been overwhelmed by absurdities, but by 
impious doctrines, which have made the Universal 
Father, now a weak and vain despot, to be propitiat- 
ed by forms and flatteries, and now an almighty tor- 
turer, foreordaining multitudes of his creatures to guilt, 
and then glorifying his justice by their everlasting woe. 
When I think what Christianity has become in the 
hands of politicians and priests, how it has been shap- 
ed into a weapon of power, how it has crushed the 
human soul for ages, how it has struck the intellect 
with palsy and haunted the imagination with super- 
stitious phantoms, how it has broken whole nations to 



DISCOURSE I. 



9 



the yoke, and frowned on every free thought ; when 
I think how, under almost every form of this religion, 
its ministers have taken it into their own keeping, have 
hewn and compressed it into the shape of rigid creeds, 
and have then pursued by menaces of everlasting wx>e 
whoever should question the divinity of these works 
of their hands ; when I consider, in a word, how, under 
such influences, Christianity has been and still is ex- 
hibited, in forms which shock alike the reason, con- 
science, and heart, I feel deeply, painfully, what a 
different system it is from that which Jesus taught, 
and I dare not apply to unbelief the terms of condem- 
nation which belonged to the infidelity of the primitive 
age. 

Perhaps I ought to go further. Perhaps I ought to 
say, that to reject Christianity under some of its cor- 
ruptions is rather a virtue than a crime. At the pres- 
ent moment, I would ask, whether it is a vice to doubt 
the truth of Christianity, as it is manifested in Spain and 
Portugal. When a patriot in those benighted coun- 
tries, who knows Christianity only as a bulwark of des- 
potism, as a rearer of inquisitions, as a stern jailor 
immuring wretched woman in the convent, as an exe- 
cutioner stained and reeking with the blood of the 
friends of freedom ; I say, when the patriot, who sees 
in our religion the instrument of these crimes and woes, 
believes and affirms that it is not from God, are we 
authorized to charge his unbelief on dishonesty and 
corruption of mind, and to brand him as a culprit ? 
May it not be that the spirit of Christianity in his 
heart emboldens him to protest with his lips against 
what bears the name ? And if he thus protest, through 



10 



DISCOURSE I. 



a deep sympathy with the oppression and sufferings 
of his race, is he not nearer the kingdom of God than 
the priest and inquisitor who boastingly and exclusive- 
ly assume the Christian name ? Jesus Christ has told 
us, that " this is the condemnation " of the unbeliev- 
ing, " that they love darkness rather than light " ; and 
who does not see, that this ground of condemnation is 
removed, just in proportion as the light is quenched, 
or Christian truth is buried in darkness and debasing 
error ? 

I know I shall be told that a man in the circumstan- 
ces now supposed, would still be culpable for his un- 
belief, because the Scriptures are within his reach, and 
these are sufficient to guide him to the true doctrines 
of Christ. But in the countries of which I have spo- 
ken, the Scriptures are not common ; and if they were, 
I apprehend that we should task human strength too 
severely, in requiring it, under every possible disadvan- 
tage, to gain the truth from this source alone. A man, 
born and brought up in the thickest darkness, and 
amidst the grossest corruptions of Christianity, accus- 
tomed to hear the Scriptures disparaged, accustomed 
to connect false ideas with their principal terms, and 
wanting our most common helps of criticism, can hard- 
ly be expected to detach from the mass of error which 
bears the name of the gospel, the simple principles of 
the primitive faith. Let us not exact too much of our 
fellow creatures. In our zeal for Christianity, let us 
not forget its spirit of equity and mercy. — In these 
remarks I have taken an extreme case. I have sup- 
posed a man subjected to the greatest disadvantages 
in regard to the knowledge of Christianity. But 



DISCOURSE I. 



11 



obstacles less serious may exculpate the unbeliever. 
In truth , none of us can draw the line which separates 
between innocence and guilt in this particular. To 
measure the responsibility of a man, who doubts or de- 
nies Christianity, we must know the history of his 
mind, his capacity of judgment, the early influences 
and prejudices to which he was exposed, the forms 
under which the religion and its proofs first fixed his 
thoughts, and the opportunities since enjoyed of eradi- 
cating errors, which struck root before the power of 
trying them was unfolded. We are not his judges. 
At another and an unerring tribunal he must give ac- 
count. 

I cannot then join in the common cry against infi- 
delity as the sure mark of a corrupt mind. That 
unbelief often has its origin in evil dispositions I can- 
not doubt. The character of the unbeliever often 
forces us to acknowledge, that he rejects Christianity 
to escape its rebukes ; that its purity is its chief 
offence ; that he seeks infidelity as a refuge from fear 
and virtuous restraint. But to impute these unholy 
motives to a man of pure life, is to judge rashly, and 
it may be unrighteously. I cannot look upon unbe- 
lief as essentially and unfailingly a crime. But I do 
look upon it as among the greatest of calamities. It 
is the loss of the chief aid of virtue, of the mightiest 
power over temptation, of the most quickening knowl- 
edge of God, of the only unfailing light, of the only 
sure hope. The unbeliever would gain unspeakably 
by parting with every possession for the truth which 
he doubts or rejects. And how shall we win him to 
the faith ? Not by reproach, by scorn, by tones of 



12 



DISCOURSE I. 



superiority ; but by paying due respect to his under- 
standing, his virtues, and his right of private judg- 
ment ; by setting before him Christianity in its simple 
majesty, its reasonableness, and wonderful adaptation 
to the wants of our spiritual nature ; by exhibiting its 
proofs without exaggeration, yet in their full strength ; 
and, above all, by showing in our own characters and 
lives, that there is in Christianity a power to purify, 
elevate, and console, which can be found in no human 
teaching. These are the true instruments of conver- 
sion. The ignorant and superstitious may indeed be 
driven into a religion by menace and reproach. But 
the reflecting unbeliever cannot but distrust a cause 
which admits such weapons. He must be reasoned 
with as a man, an equal, and a brother. Perhaps we 
may silence him for a time, by spreading through the 
community a fanatical excitement, and a persecuting 
hatred of infidelity. But as by such processes Chris- 
tianity would be made to take a more unlovely and 
irrational form, its secret foes would be multiplied ; 
its brightest evidence would be dimmed, its foundation 
sapped, its energy impaired ; and whenever the time 
should arrive for throwing off the mask (and that time 
would come), we should learn, that in the very ranks 
of its nominal disciples, there had been trained a host 
of foes, who would burn to prostrate the intolerant 
faith, which had so long sealed their lips, and trampled 
on the rights and freedom of the human mind. 

According to these views, I do not condemn the un- 
believer, unless he bear witness against himself by an 
immoral and irreligious life. It is not riven me to 
search his heart. But this power is given to himself, 



DISCOURSE L 



13 



and as a friend, I call upon him to exert it ; I ask him 
to look honestly into his own mind, to question his past 
life, and to pronounce impartial sentence on the causes 
of his unbelief. Let hirn ask himself, whether he has 
inquired into the principles and proofs of Christianity 
deliberately and in the love of truth ; whether the 
desire to discover and fulfill his duties to God and 
his fellow creatures has governed his examination ; 
whether he has surrendered himself to no passions or 
pursuits which religion and conscience rebuke, and 
which bar the mind and sear the heart against the 
truth. If, thus self-questioned, his heart acquit him, 
let no man condemn him, and let him heed no man's 
condemnation. But if conscience bear witness against 
him, he has cause to suspect and dread his unbelief. 
He has reason to fear, that it is the fruit of a depraved 
mind, and that it will ripen and confirm the deprav- 
ity from which it sprung. 

I know that there are those, who will construe what 
they will call my lenity towards unbelief, into treach- 
ery towards Christianity. There are those who think, 
that unless skepticism be ranked among the worst 
crimes, and the infidel be marked out for abhorrence 
and dread, the multitude of men will lose their hold 
on the gospel. An opinion more discreditable to 
Christianity cannot easily be advanced by its friends. 
It virtually admits, that the proofs of our religion, 
unless examined under the influence of terror, cannot 
work conviction ; that the gospel cannot be left, like 
other subjects, to the calm and unbiassed judgment of 
mankind. It discovers a distrust of Christianity, with 
which I have no sympathy. 'And here I would re- 
2 



14 



DISCOURSE I. 



mark, that the worst abuses of our religion have sprung 
from this cowardly want of confidence in its power. Its 
friends have feared, that it could not stand without a 
variety of artificial buttresses. They have imagined, 
that men must now be bribed into faith by annexing to 
it temporal privileges, now driven into it by menaces 
and inquisitions, now attracted by gorgeous forms, now 
awed by mysteries and superstitions ; in a word, that 
the multitude must be imposed upon, or the religion 
will fall. I have no such distrust of Christianity ; 
I believe in its invincible powers. It is founded in 
our nature. It meets our deepest wants. Its proofs 
as well as principles are adapted to the common 
understandings of men, and need not to be aided by 
appeals to fear or any other passion, which would 
discourage inquiry or disturb the judgment. I fear 
nothing for Christianity, if left to speak in its own 
tones, to approach men with its unveiled, benignant 
countenance. I do fear much from the weapons of 
policy and intimidation, which are framed to uphold 
the imagined weakness of Christian truth. 

I now come to the great object of this discourse, — 
an exhibition of the proofs of Christianity ; — and I 
begin with a topic which is needed to prepare some, 
if not many, to estimate these proofs fairly, and ac- 
cording to their true weight. I begin with the position, 
That there is nothing in the general idea of Revelation at 
which Reason ought to take offence, nothing inconsistent 
with any established truth, or with our best views of God 
and Nature. This topic meets a prejudice not very 
rare. I repeat it then," Revelation is nothing incred- 



DISCOURSE I. 



15 



ible, nothing which carries contradiction on its face, 
nothing at war with any great principles of reason or 
experience. On hearing of God's teaching us by 
some other means than the fixed order of nature, we 
ought not to be surprised, nor ought the suggestion to 
awaken resistance in our minds. 

Revelation is not at war with nature. From the 
necessity of the case 5 the earliest instruction must have 
come to human beings from this source. If our race 
had a beginning (and nothing but the insanity of 
Atheism can doubt this), then its first members, created 
as they were without human parentage, and having no 
resource in the experience of fellow creatures who had 
preceded them, required an immediate teaching from 
their Creator ; they would have perished without it. 
Revelation, was the very commencement of human 
history, the foundation of all later knowledge and 
improvement. It w T as an essential part of the course 
of Providence, and must not then be regarded as a 
discord in God's general system. 

Revelation is not at war with nature. Nature 
prompts us to expect it from the relation which God 
bears to the human race. The relation of Creator is 
the most intimate which can subsist ; and it leads us 
to anticipate a free and affectionate intercourse with 
the creature. That the Universal Father should be 
bound by a parental interest to his offspring, that he 
should watch over and assist the progress of beings 
whom he has enriched with the divine gifts of reason 
and conscience, is so natural a doctrine, so accordant 
with his character, that various sects, both philosoph- 
ical and religious, both anterior and subsequent to 



16 



DISCOURSE I. 



Christianity, have believed, not only in general revela- 
tion, but that God reveals himself to every human 
soul. When I think of the vast capacities of the 
human mind, of God's nearness to it, and unbounded 
love towards it, I am disposed to wonder, not that 
revelations have been made, but that they have not 
been more variously vouchsafed to the wants of man- 
kind. 

Revelation has a striking agreement with the chief 
method, which God has instituted for carrying forward 
individuals and the race, and is thus in harmony with 
his ordinary operations. Whence is it, that we all 
acquire our chief knowledge? Not from the outward 
universe ; not from the fixed laws of material nature ' 7 
but from intelligent beings, more advanced than our- 
selves. The teachings of the wise and good are our 
chief aids. Were our connexion with superior minds 
broken off, had w 7 e no teacher but nature with its 
fixed laws, its unvarying revolutions of night and 
day and seasons, we should remain for ever in 
the ignorance of childhood. Nature is a volume, 
which we can read only by the help of an intelligent 
interpreter. The great law under which man is 
placed, is, that he shall receive illumination and im- 
pulse from beings more improved than himself. Now 
revelation is only an extension of this universal method 
of carrying forward mankind. In this case, God takes 
on himself the office to which all rational beings are 
called. He becomes an immediate teacher to a few, 
communicating to them a higher order of truths than 
had before been attained, which they in turn are to 
teach to their race. Here is no new power or element 



DISCOURSE I. 



17 



introduced into the system, but simply an enlargement 
of that agency on which the progress of man chiefly 
depends. 

Let me next ask you to consider. Why or for what 
end God has ordained, as the chief means of human 
improvement, the communication of light from superior 
to inferior minds ; and if it shall then appear, that 
revelation is strikingly adapted to promote a similar 
though more important end, you will have another 
mark of agreement between revelation and his ordi- 
nary Providence. Why is it that God has made men's 
progress dependent on instruction from their fellow 
beings ? Why are the more advanced commissioned to 
teach the less informed? A great purpose, I believe 
the chief purpose, is, to establish interesting relations 
among men, to bind them to one another by generous 
sentiments, to promote affectionate intercourse, to call 
forth a purer love than could spring from a commu- 
nication of mere outward gifts. Now it is rational to be- 
lieve, that the Creator designs to bind his creatures to 
Himself as truly as to one another, and to awaken to- 
wards himself even stronger gratitude, confidence, and 
love ; for these sentiments towards God are more Happy 
and ennobling than towards any other being ; and it is 
plain that revelation, or immediate divine teaching, 
serves as effectually to establish these ties between 
God and man, as human teaching to attach men to 
one another. We see then in revelation an end cor- 
responding to what the Supreme Being adopts in his 
common providence. That the end here affirmed is 
worthy of his interposition, who can doubt ? His 
benevolence can propose no higher purpose, than that 
2* 



18 



DISCOURSE I. 



of raising the minds and hearts of his creatures to him- 
self. His parental character is a pledge, that he must 
intend this ineffable happiness for his rational offspring ; 
and Revelation is suited to this end, not only by unfold- 
ing new doctrines in relation to God, but by the 
touching proof which it carries in itself of the special 
interest which he takes in his human family. There 
is plainly an expression of deeper concern, a more 
affectionate character, in this mode of instruction, than 
in teaching us by the fixed order of nature. Revela- 
tion is God speaking to us in our own language, in the 
accents which human friendship employs. It shows a 
love, breaking through the reserve and distance, which 
we all feel to belong to the method of teaching us by 
his works alone. It fastens our minds on him. We 
can look on nature, and not think of the Being whose 
glory it declares ; but God is indissolubly connected 
with, and indeed is a part of the idea of revelation. 
How much nearer does this direct intercourse bring 
him to the mass of mankind ! On this account revela- 
tion would seem to me important, were it simply to 
repeat the teachings of nature. This reiteration of 
great truths in a less formal style, in kinder, more 
familiar tones, is peculiarly fitted to awaken the soul 
to the presence and benignity of its heavenly Parent. 
I see then in revelation a purpose corresponding with 
that for which human teaching was instituted. Both 
are designed to bring together the teacher and the 
taught in pure affections. 

Let me next ask you to consider, what is the kind 
of instruction which the higher minds among men are 
chiefly called to impart to the inferior. You will here 



DISCOURSE I. 



19 



see another agreement between revelation and that 
ordinary human teaching, which is the great instru- 
ment of improving the race. What kind of instruction 
is it, which parents, which the aged and experienced, 
are most anxious to give to the young, and on which 
the safety of this class mainly depends ? It is instruc- 
tion in relation to the Future, to their adult years, 
such as is suited to prepare them for the life that is 
opening before them. It is God's will, when he gives 
us birth, that we should be forewarned of the future 
stages of our being, of approaching manhood or 
womanhood, of the scenes, duties, labors, through 
which we are to pass ; and for this end he connects 
us with beings, who have traversed the paths on which 
we are entering, and whose duty it is to train us for a 
more advanced age. Instruction in regard to Futurity 
is the great means of improvement. Now the Chris- 
tian revelation has for its aim to teach us on this very 
subject ; to disclose the life which is before us, and to 
fit us for it. A Future state is its constant burden. 
That God should give us light in regard to that state, 
if he design us for it, is what we should expect from 
his solicitude to teach us in regard to what is future in 
our earthly existence. Nature thirsts for, and analogy 
almost promises, some illumination on the subject of 
human destiny. This topic I shall insist on more 
largely hereafter. I wish now simply to show you the 
agreement of revelation, in this particular, with the 
ordinary providence of God. 

I proceed to another order of reflections, which 
to my own mind is particularly suited to meet the 
vague idea, that revelation is at war with nature. To 



20 



DISCOURSE I. 



judge of nature, we should look at its highest ranks of 
beings. We should inquire of the human Soul, which 
we all feel to be a higher existence than matter. Now 
I maintain, that there are in the human soul wants, 
deep wants, which are not met by the influences and 
teachings, which the ordinary course of things affords. 
I am aware that this is a topic to provoke distrust, if 
not derision, in the low-minded and sensual; but I 
speak what I do know; and nothing moves me so little 
as the scoffs of men who despise their own nature. 
One of the most striking views of human nature, is the 
disproportion between what it conceives and thirsts for, 
and what it finds or can secure in the range of the 
present state. It is prone to stretch beyond its pres- 
ent bounds. Ideas of excellence and happiness spring 
up, which it cannot realize now. It carries within 
itself a standard, of which it daily and hourly falls short. 
This self-contradiction is the source of many sharp 
pains. There is, in most men, a dim consciousness, 
at least, of being made for something higher than they 
have gained, a feeling of internal discord, a want of 
some stable good, a disappointment in merely outward 
acquisitions ; and in proportion as these convictions 
and wants become distinct, they break out in desires 
of illumination and aids from God not found in nature. 
I am aware, that the wants of which I have spoken 
are but faintly developed in the majority of men. Ac- 
customed to give their thoughts and strength to the 
outward world, multitudes do not penetrate and can- 
not interpret their own souls. They impute to out- 
ward causes the miseries w T hich spring from an in- 
ternal fountain. They do not detain, and are scarce- 



DISCOURSE I. 



21 



ly conscious of the better thoughts and feelings, which 
sometimes dart through their minds. Still there are 
few, who are not sometimes dissatisfied with them- 
selves, who do not feel the wrong which they have 
done to themselves, and who do not desire a purer 
and nobler state of mind. The suddenness, with 
which the multitude are thrilled by the voice of fervent 
eloquence, when it speaks to them of the spiritual world 
in tones of reality, shows the deep wants of human 
nature even amidst ignorance and degradation. But 
all men do not give themselves wholly to outward 
things. There are those, and not a few, who are 
more true to their nature, and ought therefore to be 
regarded as its more faithful representatives ; and in 
such, the wants, of which I have spoken, are unfolded 
with energy. There are those, who feel painfully the 
weight of their present imperfection ; who are fired by 
rare examples of magnanimity and devotion ; who de- 
sire nothing so intensely as power over temptation, 
as elevation above selfish passions, as conformity of 
will to the inward law of duty, as the peace of con- 
scious rectitude and religious trust ; who would re- 
joice to lay down the present life for that spotless, 
bright, disinterested virtue, of which they have the 
type or germ in their own minds. Such men can find 
no resource but in God, and are prepared to wel- 
come a revelation of his merciful purposes as an un- 
speakable gift. I say then that the human mind has 
wants which nature does not answer. And these are 
not accidental feelings, unaccountable caprices, but are 
deep, enduring, and reproduced in all ages under one 
or another form. They breathe through the works 



22 



DISCOURSE I. 



of genius ; they burn in the loftiest souls. Here 
are principles implanted by God in the highest or- 
der of his creatures on earth, to which revelation is 
adapted, and I say then that revelation is any thing 
but hostility to nature. 

I will offer but one more view in illustration of this 
topic. I ask you to consider, on what Principle of 
human nature the Christian revelation is intended to 
bear and to exert influence, and then to inquire wheth- 
er the peculiar importance of this principle be not a 
foundation for peculiar interposition in its behalf. If 
so, revelation may be said to be a demand of the 
human soul, and its imagined incongruity with nature 
will disappear. For what principle or faculty of the 
mind then was Christianity intended ? It was plainly 
not given to enrich the intellect by teaching philoso- 
phy, or to perfect the imagination and taste by fur- 
nishing sublime and beautiful models of composition. 
It was not meant to give sagacity in public life, or 
skill and invention in common affairs. It was un- 
doubtedly designed to develope all these faculties, 
but secondarily, and through its influence on a higher 
principle. It addresses itself primarily, and is es- 
pecially adapted, to the Moral power in man. It re- 
gards and is designed for man as a moral being, en- 
dued with conscience or the principle of duty, who 
is capable of that peculiar form of excellence which 
we call righteousness or virtue, and exposed to that 
peculiar evil, guilt. Now the question offers itself, 
Why does God employ such extraordinary means for 
promoting virtue rather than science, for aiding con- 
science rather than intellect and our other powers ? 



DISCOURSE I. 



23 



Is there a oundation in the moral principle for pecu- 
liar interpositions in its behalf? I affirm, that there 
is. I affirm, that a broad distinction exists between 
our moral nature and our other capacities. Con- 
science is the Supreme power within us. Its essence, 
its grand characteristic, is Sovereignty. It speaks with 
a divine authority. Its office is to command, to re- 
buke, to reward ; and happiness and honor depend on 
the reverence with which we listen to it. All our other 
powers become useless and worse than useless, unless 
controlled by the principle of duty. Virtue is the 
supreme good, the supreme beauty, the divinest of 
God's gifts, the health and harmonious unfolding of 
the soul, and the germ of immortality. It is worth 
every sacrifice, and has power to transmute sacrifices 
and sufferings into crowns of glory and rejoicing. 
Sin, vice, is an evil of its own kind, and not to be 
confounded with any other. Who does not feel at 
once the broad distinction between misfortune and 
crime, between disease of body and turpitude of soul? 
Sin, vice, is war with the highest power in our own 
breasts, and in the universe. It makes a being 
odious to himself, and arms against him the principle of 
rectitude in God and in all pure beings. It poisons 
or dries up the fountains of enjoyment, and adds un- 
speakable weight to the necessary pains of life. It 
is not a foreign evil, but a blight and curse in the 
very centre of our being. Its natural associates are 
fear, shame, and self-torture ; and whilst it robs the 
present of consolation, it leaves the future without 
hope. Now I say, that in this peculiar ruin wrought 
by moral evil, and in this peculiar worth of moral 



24 



DISCOURSE I. 



goodness, we see reasons for special interpositions 
of God in behalf of virtue, in resistance of sin. It 
becomes the Infinite Father to manifest peculiar in- 
terest in the moral condition and wants of his crea- 
tures. Their great and continued corruption is an 
occasion for peculiar methods of relief ; and a revela- 
tion given to restore them, and carry them forward 
to perfection, has an end which justifies, if it does not 
demand, this signal expression of parental love. 

The preceding views have been offered, not as suf- 
ficient to prove that a revelation has been given, but for 
the purpose of removing the vague notion that it is 
at war with nature, and of showing its consistency 
with the spirit and principles of the divine adminis- 
tration. I proceed now to consider the direct and 
positive proofs of Christianity, beginning with some 
remarks on the nature and sufficiency of the evidence 
on which it chiefly relies. 

Christianity sprung up about eighteen hundred 
years ago. Of course its evidences are to be sought 
in history. We must go back to the time of its birth, 
and understand the condition in which it found the 
world, as well as the circumstances of its origin, pro- 
gress, and establishment ; and happily, on these points, 
we have all the light necessary to a just judgment. 
We must not imagine, that a religion, which bears the 
date of so distant an age, must therefore be involved 
in obscurity. We know enough of the earliest times 
of Christianity to place the question of its truth with- 
in our reach. The past, may be known as truly as the 
present ; and I deem this principle so important in 
the present discussion that I ask your attention to it. 



DISCOURSE I. 



25 



The past, I have said, may be known ; nor is this 
all ; we derive from it our most important knowledge. 
Former times are our chief instructers. Our politi- 
cal, as well as religious institutions, our laws, cus- 
toms, modes of thinking, arts of life, have come down 
from earlier ages, and most of them are unintelligi- 
ble without a light borrowed from history. 

Not only are we able to know the nearest of past 
ages, or those which touch on our own times, but 
those which are remote. No educated man doubts 
any more of the victories of Alexander or Caesar, 
before Christ, than of Napoleon 's conquests in our own 
day. So open is our communication with some ages 
of antiquity, so many are the records which they have 
transmitted, that we know them even better than 
nearer times ; and a religion which grew up eighteen 
hundred years ago, may be more intelligible and ac- 
companied with more decisive proofs of truth or false- 
hood, than one which is not separated from us by a 
fourth part of that duration. 

From the nature of things, we may and must know 7 
much of the past ; for the present has grown out of 
the past, is its legacy, fruit, representative, and is deep- 
ly impressed with it. Events do not expire at the 
moment of their occurrence. Nothing takes place 
without leaving traces behind it ; and these are in many 
cases so distinct and various, as to leave not a doubt of 
their cause. We all understand, how, in the mate- 
rial world, events testify of themselves to future ages. 
Should we visit an unknown region, and behold mass- 
es of lava covered with soil of different degrees of 
thickness, and surrounding a blackened crater, we 
3 



26 



DISCOURSE I. 



should have as firm a persuasion of the occurrence 
of remote and successive volcanic eruptions, as if we 
had lived through the ages in which they took place. 
The chasms of the earth would report how terribly 
it had been shaken, and the awful might of long- 
extinguished fires would be written in desolations which 
ages had failed to efface. Now conquest, and civil 
and religious revolutions, leave equally their impres- 
sions on society, leave institutions, manners, and a 
variety of monuments, which are inexplicable without 
them, and which, taken together, admit not a doubt of 
their occurrence. The past stretches into the future, 
the present is crowded with it, and can be interpreted 
only by the light of history, 

But besides these effects and remains of earlier 
times, we have other and more distinct memorials of 
the past, which, when joined with the former, place 
it clearly within our knowledge. I refer to books. 
A book is more than a monument of a preceding 
age. It is a voice coming to us over the interval of 
centuries. Language, when written, as truly conveys 
to us another's mind as when spoken. It is a spe- 
cies of personal intercourse. By it the wise of former 
times give us their minds as really, as if by some 
miracle they were to rise from the dead and com- 
municate with us by speech. 

From these remarks we learn that Christianity is not 
placed beyond the reach of our investigations by the 
remoteness of its origin ; and they are particularly ap- 
plicable to the age in which the gospel was first given 
to the world. Our religion did not spring up before 
the date of authentic history. Its birth is not hidden 



DISCOURSE I. 



27 



in the obscurity of early and fabulous times. We 
have abundant means of access to its earliest stages ; 
and, what is very important, the deep and peculiar 
interest which Christianity has awakened, has fixed 
the earnest attention of the most learned and saga- 
cious men on the period of its original publication, 
so that no age of antiquity is so thoroughly under- 
stood. Christianity sprung up at a time, when the 
literature and philosophy of Greece were spread far 
and wide, and had given a great impulse to the human 
mind ; and when Rome by unexampled conquests had 
become a centre and bond of union to the civilized 
world and to many half civilized regions, and had es- 
tablished a degree of communication between distant 
countries before unknown. We are not then left to 
grope our way by an unsteady light. Our means of 
information are various and great. We have incon- 
testable facts in relation to the origin of our religion, 
from which its truth may be easily deduced. A few 
of these facts, which, form the first steps of our reason- 
ing on this subject, I will now lay before you. 

1. First, then, we know with certainty the time 
when Christianity was founded. As to this fact, 
there is and can be no doubt. Heathen and Chris- 
tian historians speak on this point with one voice. 
Christianity was first preached in the age of Tiberius. 
Not a trace of it exists before that period, and after- 
wards the marks and proofs of its existence are so ob- 
vious and acknowledged as to need no mention. Here 
is one important fact placed beyond doubt. 

2. In the next place, we know the jjlace where 
Christianity sprung up. No one can dispute the coun- 



28 



DISCOURSE I. 



try of its birth. Its Jewish origin is not only testified 
by all history, but is stamped on its front and woven 
into its frame. The language, in which it is conveyed, 
carries us at once to Judea. Its name is derived from 
Jewish prophecy. None but Jews could have written 
the New Testament. So natural, undesigned, and 
perpetual are the references and allusions of the wri- 
ters to the opinions and manners of that people, so 
? x med are they to borrow from the same source 
etaphors, similitudes, types, by which they il- 
lustrate their doctrines, that Christianity, as to its out- 
ward form, may be said to be steeped in Judaism. 
We have then another established fact. We know 
where it was born. 

3. Again, we know the individual by whom Chris- 
tianity w T as founded. We know its Author, and from 
the nature of the case this fact cannot but be known. 
The founder of a religion is naturally and necessarily 
the object of general inquiry. Wherever the new 
faith is carried, the first and most eager questions are, 
"From whom does it come? On whose authority 
does it rest ? " Curiosity is never more intense, than 
in regard to the individual, who claims a divine com- 
mission and sends forth a new religion. He is the last 
man to be overlooked or mistaken. In the case of 
Christianity especially, its founder may be said to have 
been forced on men's notice, for his history forms 
an essential part of his religion. Christianity is not an 
abstract doctrine, which keeps its author out of sight. 
He is its very soul. It rests on him, and finds its 
best illustration in his life. These reflections howev- 
er may be spared. The simple consideration, that 



DISCOURSE I. 



29 



Christianity must have had an author, and that it has 
been always ascribed to Jesus and to no one else, 
places the great fact, which I would establish, beyond 
doubt. 

4. I next observe that we not only know the 
founder of Christianity, but the Ministers by whom 
he published and spread it through the world. A 
new religion must have propagators, first teachers, and 
with these it must become intimately associated. A 
community can no more be ignorant as to the teach- 
ers who converted it to a new faith, than as to the 
conqueror who subjected it to a new government ; 
and where the art of writing is known and used for 
recording events, the latter fact will not more cer- 
tainly be transmitted to posterity than the former. 
We have the testimony of all ages, that the men call- 
ed Apostles were the first propagators of Christianity, 
nor have any others been named as sustaining this 
office ; and it is impossible that, on such a point, such 
testimony should be false. 

5. Again ; we know not only when, and where, and 
by whom Christianity was introduced ; — we know, 
from a great variety of sources, what in the main 
this religion was, as it came from the hands of its 
founder. To assure ourselves on this point, we need 
not recur to any sacred books. From the age fol- 
lowing that of Christ and the Apostles, down to the 
present day, we have a series, and an almost num- 
berless host, of writers on the subject of Chris- 
tianity ; and whilst we discover in them a great di- 
versity of opinions, and opposite interpretations of 
some of Christ's teachings, yet on the whole they so 

3* 



30 



DISCOURSE I. 



far agree in the great facts of his history, and in cer- 
tain great principles of his religion, we that cannot 
mistake as to the general character of the system 
which he taught. There is not a shadow of reason 
for the opinion that the original system which Jesus 
taught was lost, and a new one substituted and fas- 
tened on the world in his name. The many and 
great corruptions of Christianity did not and could not 
hide its principal features. The greatest corruptions 
took place in the century which followed the death 
of the Apostles, when certain wild and visionary sects 
endeavoured to establish a union between the new 
religion and the false philosophy to which they had 
been wedded in their heathen state. You may judge 
of their character and claims, when I tell you, that they 
generally agreed in believing, that the God who made 
the world, and w T ho was worshipped by the Jews 3 
was not the supreme God, but an inferior and imper- 
fect Deity, and that matter had existed from eternity, 
and was essentially and unchangeably evil. Yet these 
sects endeavoured to sustain themselves on the wri- 
tings which the great body of Christians received and 
honored as the w r orks of the Apostles ; and, amidst 
their delusions, they recognised and taught the miracles 
of Christ, his resurrection, and the most important prin- 
ciples of his religion; so that the general nature of 
Christianity, as it came from its Founder, may be as- 
certained beyond a doubt. Here another great point 
is fixed. 

6. I have now stated to you several particulars re- 
lating to Christianity, which admit no doubt ; and 
these indisputable facts are of great weight in a discus- 



DISCOURSE I. 



31 



sion of the Christian evidences. There is one point 
more, of importance, which cannot be settled so ex- 
peditiously as these. I hope, however, enough may 
be said to place it beyond doubt, without exceeding 
the limits of a discourse ; and I invite to it your serious 
attention. I say, then, that we not only know in gene- 
ral what Christianity w T as at its first promulgati n ; but 
we know precisely what its first propagators taught, 
for we have their w T ritings. We have their religion 
under their own hands. We have particularly four 
narratives of the life, works, and words of their Master, 
which put us in possession of his most private as well 
public teaching. It is true, that without those writings 
we should still have strong arguments for the truth of 
Christianity ; but we should be left in doubt as to 
some of its important principles ; and its internal 
evidence, which corroborates, and, as some think, 
exceeds the external, would be very much impaired. 
The possession of the writings of the first propagators 
of the gospel must plainly render us great aid in judg- 
ing of its claims. These writings, I say, we have, and 
this point I would now establish. 

I am aware that the question, to which I now ask 
your attention, is generally confined to professed stu- 
dents. But it is one on which men of good sense are 
competent to judge, and its great importance gives it a 
claim to the serious consideration of every Christian. 

The question is, whether the four Gospels are genu- 
ine, that is, whether they were written by those to 
w T hom they are ascribed. To answer it, let us con- 
sider how we determine the genuineness of books in 
general! I begin with the obvious remark, that to 



32 



DISCOURSE I. 



know the author of a work, it is not necessary that we 
should be eye-witnesses of its composition. Perhaps 
of the numberless publications of the present day, we 
have not seen one growing under the pen of the wri- 
ter. By far the greater number come to us across the 
ocean, and yet we are as confident in regard to their 
authors as if we had actually seen them first committed 
to paper. The ascription of a book to an individual, 
during his life, by those who are interested in him, 
and who have the best means of knowing the truth, 
removes all doubts as to its author. A strong and 
wide-spread conviction of this kind must have a cause, 
and can only be explained by the actual production of 
the work by the reputed writer. It should here be 
remembered that there is a strong disposition in men 
to ascertain the author of an important and interesting 
work. We have had a remarkable illustration of this 
in our own times. The author of Waverley saw fit to 
wrap himself for a time in mystery ; and what was the 
consequence ? No subject in politics or science was 
agitated more generally than the question to whom 
the work belonged. It was not only made a topic in 
almost every periodical publication, but one book was 
expressly written to solve the problem. The instance, 
I know, was remarkable ; but this inquisitiveness in re- 
gard to books is a principle of our nature, and is par- 
ticularly active, when the book in debate is a work of 
singular authority. 

I have spoken of the confidence which we feel as to 
the authors of books published in our own times. 
But our certainty is not confined to these. Every 
reading man is assure that Hume and Robertsoti wrote 



DISCOURSE I. 



33 



the histories which bear their names, as that Scott has 
in our own times sent out the Life of Bonaparte. 
Those eminent men were born more than a hundred 
years ago, and they died before the birth of most to 
whom I speak. But the communication between 
their times and our own is so open and various, that we 
know their literary labors as well as those of the pres- 
ent day. Not a few persons now living have had 
intercourse with some of the contemporaries of these 
historians ; and through this channel in particular, we of 
this generation have the freest access to the preceding, 
and know its convictions in regard to the authors of 
interesting books as fully as if we had lived in it our- 
selves. That the next age will have the same com- 
munication with the present, as the present has with 
the past, and that these convictions of our predeces- 
sors will be transmitted by us to our immediate suc- 
cessors, you will easily comprehend ; and you will 
thus learn the respect which is due to the testimony 
of the third generation on such a subject. 

In what has now been said, we see with what confi- 
dence and certainty we determine the authors of 
writings published in our own age or in the times nearest 
our own. These remarks may be easily applied to 
the productions of antiquity. When the question 
arises, whether an ancient book was written by the 
individual whose name it bears, we must inquire into 
the opinion of his contemporaries, or of those who 
succeeded his contemporaries so nearly as to have 
intimate communication with them. The competency 
of these to a just judgment on the subject, we have 
seen ; and if they have transmitted their convictions to 



34 



DISCOURSE I. 



us in undisputed writings, it ought to be decisive. 
On this testimony, we ascribe many ancient books 
to their authors with the firmest faith ; and, in truth, 
we receive as genuine many works of antiquity on far 
inferior proofs. There are many books of which no 
notice can be found for several ages after the time of 
their reputed authors. Still the fact, that, as soon as 
they are named, they are ascribed undoubtingly, and 
by general consent, to certain authors, is esteemed a 
sufficient reason for regarding them as their produc- 
tions, unless some opposite proof can be adduced. 
This general reception of a work as having come from 
a particular writer, is an effect which requires a cause ; 
and the most natural and obvious explanation of his 
being named rather than any other man, is, that he 
actually composed it. 

I now proceed to apply these principles to the four 
histories of Christ, commonly called Gospels. The 
question is, what testimony respecting their authors has 
come down to us from the age of their reputed authors, 
or from times so near it and so connected with it, as to 
be faithful representatives of its convictions. By this 
testimony, as we have seen, the genuineness of the 
books must be decided. And I begin with admitting 
that no evidence on the subject is to be derived from 
contemporary writers. No author, living in the age 
of the first propagators of Christianity, has named the 
Gospels. The truth is, that no undisputed writings of 
their immediate converts have been preserved. A few 
tracts, bearing the name of men acquainted with the 
Apostles have indeed come down to us ; but so much un- 
certainty hangs over their origin, that I am unwilling to 



DISCOURSE I. 



35 



ground on them any reasoning. Nor ought we to won- 
der that the works of private Christians of the primitive 
age are wanting to us ; for that was an age of per- 
secution, when men were called to die rather than 
write for their religion. I suppose too, that during 
the times of the Apostles, little importance was attach- 
ed to any books but such as were published or author- 
ized by these eminent men ; and, of course, what was 
written by others was little circulated, and soon pass- 
ed away. 

The undisputed writings of the early Christians 
begin about seventy years after the times of the 
Apostles. At that period there probably remained none 
of the first converts or contemporaries of the Apostles, 
But there were living not a few, who had been ac- 
quainted with the last survivors of that honored gen- 
eration. When the Apostles died, they must have 
left behind a multitude who had known them ; and of 
these not a few must have continued many years, and 
must have had intercourse with the new generation 
which sprung up after the apostolic age. Now in the 
times of this generation, the series of Christian authors 
begins. Although, then, we have no productions of 
the apostolic age to bear witness to the Gospels, 
we have writings from the ages which immediately 
followed it, and which, from their connexion with 
it, ought, as we have seen, to be regarded, as most 
credible witnesses on such a subject. What then do 
these writings teach ? I answer, Their testimony is 
clear and full. We learn from them, not only, that 
the Gospels existed in those times, but that they were 
widely diffused, that they were received as the wri- 



36 



DISCOURSE I. 



tings of the men whose names they bear, and that they 
were regarded with a confidence and veneration yielded 
to no other books. They are quoted as books given 
by their revered authors to the Christian community, 
to be public and enduring records of the religion ; 
and they are spoken of as read in the assemblies 
which were held for the inculcation and extension 
of the faith. I ask you to weigh this testimony. 
It comes to us from times connected intimately with 
the first age. Had the Gospels been invented and 
first circulated among the generation which succeeded 
the Apostles, could that generation have received them, 
as books known and honored before their time, and 
as the most authoritative and precious records trans- 
mitted to them from their fathers and predecessors ? 
The case may seem too plain to require explanation ; 
but as many are unaccustomed to inquiries of this 
kind, I will offer an example. You well know that 
nearly a century ago a great religious excitement was 
spread through this country chiefly by the ministry 
of Whitefield. Suppose now that four books were at 
this moment to come forth, bearing the names of four 
of the most distinguished men of that period, of White- 
field, of the venerable Edwards, and of two others 
intimately associated with them in their religious 
labors ; and suppose these books not only to furnish 
narratives of what then took place, but to contain 
principles and rules urged with all possible earnestness 
and authority on the disciples or admirers of these 
religious leaders. Do you think it possible that their 
followers of the present day, and the public, could 
be made to believe, that these books had been pub- 



DISCOURSE I. 



37 



lished by their pretended authors, had been given as 
standards to a religious community, and had been hand- 
ed down as venerated books, when no such works 
had been heard of before. This is but a faint illus- 
tration ; for Whitefield and Edwards are names of 
little weight or authority, compared with what the 
Apostles possessed in the primitive church. 

We have, then, strong and sufficient reasons for be- 
lieving that the histories called Gospels were received, 
in the times of the Apostles, as works of those whose 
names they bear ; and were handed down as theirs 
with veneration by their contemporaries. Will any say 
that all this may be true, but that, during the lives 
of the Apostles, books forged in their names may have 
obtained general currency ? To this extravagant sup- 
position it would be sufficient to reply, according to 
my previous remarks, that the general ascription of a 
book to an author during his life is the ground on 
which the genuineness of the most unquestioned works 
depends. But I would add, that this evidence is sin- 
gularly conclusive in the present case. The original 
propagators of Christianity, to whom the Gospels were 
ascribed, were, from their office, among the public 
men of their age. They must have travelled exten- 
sively. They must have been consulted by inhabi- 
tants of various countries on the subject of the new 
religion. They must have been objects of deep in- 
terest to the first converts. They lived in the world's 
eye. Their movements, visits, actions, words, and wri- 
tings must have awakened attention. Books from their 
hands must have produced a great sensation. We 
cannot conceive a harder task, than to impose writings, 

4 



38 



DISCOURSE I. 



forged in their name, on Christians and Christian 
communities, thus intimately connected with them, 
and so alive to their efforts for the general cause. 
The opportunities of detecting the falsehood were 
abundant; and to imagine falsehood to prosper under 
such circumstances argues a strange ignorance of lit- 
erary history and of human nature. 

Let me add, that the motives of the first Christians, 
to ascertain distinctly whether writings ascribed to the 
Apostles were truly theirs, were the strongest which 
can be conceived. I have mentioned, in my previous 
remarks, the solicitude of the world to learn the author 
of Waverley. The motive was mere curiosity ; and 
yet to what earnest inquiries were multitudes impel- 
led. The name of the author was of little or no mo- 
ment. The book was the same, its portraits equally 
vivid, its developements of the human heart equally 
true and powerful, whether the author were known 
or not. So it is with most works. Books of science, 
philosophy, morals, and polite literature owe their im- 
portance and authority, not to their writers, but to their 
contents. Now the four Gospels were different in this 
respect. They were not the same to the first converts, 
come from whom they might. If written by Apostles 
or by their associates, they had an authority and sacred- 
ness, which could belong to them on no other condi- 
tion. They became books of laws to the Christian 
community, became binding on their consciences and 
lives. To suppose such books received blindly and 
without inquiry by great numbers, who had all the 
means of ascertaining their true origin, is to suppose 
the first converts insane or idiots, a charge, which I 



DISCOURSE I. 



39 



believe their worst enemies .will not think of urging 
against them, and which the vast superiority of their 
religious and moral system to all the philosophical 
systems of the times abundantly disproves. 

I have now finished what is called the historical or 
external evidence of the genuineness of the four Gos- 
pels ; that is, the evidence drawn from their being re- 
ceived and revered as the writings of the Apostles in the 
first and succeeding ages of Christianity. But before 
leaving this head, I would notice a difficulty which 
may press on some minds. I suppose, that many of 
you have heard, that very early, probably about 
the beginning of the second century, writings were 
forged in the name of the Apostles ; and some 
may ask why the four Gospels may not belong to this 
description. The answer is, that the Gospels, as we 
have seen, were received and honored by the great 
body of Christians, in the first and succeeding ages 
of Christianity, as writings of Apostles or their associ- 
ates. The forgeries are known to be forgeries, be- 
cause they were not so received, because they were 
held in no veneration, but were rejected as ficti- 
tious by the Christian community. Here is a broad 
line of distinction. It must not surprise us, that 
in the great excitement produced by the first publi- 
cation and triumphs of Christianity, a variety of ex- 
travagant notions should spring up, and that attempts 
should be made to blend the new religion with es- 
tablished systems : and as the names of the first 
propagators of the Gospel were held in peculiar rev- 
erence, we cannot wonder that the leaders of sects 
should strive to attach an apostolic sanction to their 



40 



DISCOURSE I. 



opinions, by sending abroad partly true and partly 
false accounts of the preaching of these eminent men. 
Whether these writings were sent forth as composi- 
tions of the Apostles, or only as records of their teach- 
ing, made by their hearers, is a question open to de- 
bate ; but as to their origin there can be little doubt. 
We can account for their existence, and for the degree 
of favor which they obtained. They were generally 
written to give authority to the dreams or speculations of 
some extravagant sects, to which they were very much 
confined, and with which most of them passed away, 
There is not a shadow of reason for confounding with 
these our Gospels, which were spread from the begin- 
ning through the Christian world, and were honored 
and transmitted as the works of the venerated men 
by whose names they were called. 

Having now given the historical argument in favor of 
the genuineness of the Gospels, that is, in favor of their 
being written by their reputed authors, I now add> 
that there are several presumptive and internal proofs of 
the same truth, which, taken alone, have great weight, 
and, when connected with the preceding, form an 
amount of evidence not easily withstood. I have 
time to glance at only a few of these. 

It is a presumption in favor of the claims of an 
author, that the book ascribed to him has never been 
assigned to any other individual. Now I am not 
aware, that unbelief has in any age named any indi- 
viduals, to whom the Gospels may be traced rather than 
to those whose names they bear. We are not called 
upon to choose between different writers. In common 
cases this absence of rival claims is considered as decisive 



DISCOURSE I. 



41 



in favor of the reputed author, unless the books them- 
selves give ground to suspect another hand. Why 
shall not this principle be applied to the Gospels as 
well as to all other works ? 

Another presumption in favor of the belief that 
these histories were written by the first propagators 
of Christianity, arises from the consideration, that 
such books were to be expected from them. It is 
hardly conceivable that the Apostles, whose zeal carried 
abroad their system through so many nations, and who 
lived in an age of reading and writing, should leave 
their doctrines to tradition, should neglect the ordinary 
precaution of embodying them in the only permanent 
form, the only one in which they could be accurately 
transmitted, and by which all other systems were pre- 
served. -It is reasonable to suppose that they wrote 
what they taught : and if so, it is hardly possible that 
their writings should be lost. Their accounts must 
have been received and treasured up just as we know 
the Gospels were cherished ; and hence arises a strong 
presumption in favor of the genuineness of these 
books. 

Again ; these books carry one strong mark of hav- 
ing been written in the time of the Apostles. They 
contain no traces of later times, nothing to indicate 
that the authors belonged to another age. Now to 
those of you, who are acquainted with such subjects, it 
is hardly necessary to observe, how difficult it is for 
a writer to avoid betraying the period in which he 
lives ; and the cause is very obvious. Every age has 
its peculiarities, has manners, events, feelings, words, 
phrases of its own ; and a man brought up among these 



42 



DISCOURSE I. 



falls so naturally under their influence, and incorpo- 
rates them so fully with his own mind, that they break 
out and manifest themselves, almost necessarily and 
without his consciousness, in his words and writings. 
The present makes an impression incomparably more 
vivid than the past, and accordingly traces of the real 
age of a writer may almost always be discovered by a 
critical eye, however anxious he may be to assume 
the style and character of a preceding age. Now the 
Gospels betray no marks of the feelings, manners, con- 
tentions, events of a period later than that in which the 
Apostles lived ; and when we consider, that, with the 
exception of Luke's history, they have all the appear- 
ance of having come from plain men, unused to com- 
position, this argument applies to them with peculiar 
force. Under this head, I might place before you the 
evidence of the genuineness of these books derived 
from the language, dialect, idiom, in which they are 
written. You can easily understand, that by these 
helps the country and age of a writing may often be 
traced ; but the argument belongs to the learned. It 
may how r ever be satisfactory to know, that the pro- 
found est scholars see in the dialect and idiom of the 
Gospels a precise accordance with what might be ex- 
pected of Jews, writing in the age of the Apostles. 

Another internal proof, and one within the reach of all, 
may be gathered from the style and character of the 
evangelical narratives. They are written with the 
simplicity, minuteness, and ease, which are the natural 
tones of truth, which belong to writers thoroughly ac- 
quainted with their subjects, and writing from reality. 
You discover in them nothing of the labor, caution, 



DISCOURSE I. 



43 



and indistinctness, which can scarcely be escaped by 
men, who are assuming a character not their own, and 
aiming to impose on the world. There is a difference 
which we have all discerned and felt, though we can- 
not describe it, between an honest, simple-hearted 
witness, who tells what he has seen or is intimately 
acquainted with, and the false witness, who affects an 
intimate knowledge of events and individuals, which 
are in whole or in part his own fabrication. Truth 
has a native frankness, an unaffected freedom, a style 
and air of its own, and never were narratives more 
strongly characterized by these than the Gospels. It 
is a striking circumstance in these books, that whilst 
the life and character which they portray, are the 
most extraordinary in history, the style is the most 
artless. There is no straining for epithets or for ele- 
vation of language to suit the dignity of the great per- 
sonage who is the subject. You hear plain men, tell- 
ing you what they know of a character, which they 
venerated too much to think of adorning or extolling 
it. It is also worthy of remark, that the character of 
Jesus, though the most peculiar and exalted in history, 
though the last to be invented and the hardest to be 
sustained, is yet unfolded through a great variety of 
details and conditions, with perfect unity and consis- 
tency. The strength of this proof can only be under- 
stood by those who are sufficiently acquainted with 
literary history to appreciate the difficulty of accom- 
plishing a consistent and successful forgery. Such con- 
sistency is, in the present case, an almost infallible test. 
Suppose four writers, of a later age, to have leagued 
together in the scheme of personating the first propa- 



44 



DISCOURSE I. 



gators of Christianity, and of weaving, in their name, 
the histories of their Master's life. Removed as these 
men would have been from the original, and having 
no model or type of his character in the elevation of 
their own minds, they must have portrayed him with 
an unsteady hand, must have marred their work with 
incongruous features, must have brought down their 
hero on some occasion to the ordinary views and feel- 
ings of men, and in particular must have been warped 
in their selection and representation of incidents by 
the private purpose which led them to this singular 
cooperation. That four writers, under such circum- 
stances, should sustain throughout so peculiar and ele- 
vated a character as Jesus, and should harmonize with 
each other in the delineation, would be a prodigy 
which no genius, however preeminent, could achieve. 
I say, then, that the narratives bear strong internal 
marks of having been drawn from the living original, 
by those who had the best means of knowing his char- 
acter and life. 

So various, strong, sufficient are the proofs that the 
four Gospels are the works of the first preachers of 
Christianity, whose names they bear. I will only add, 
that the genuineness of few ancient books is supported 
by proofs equally strong. Most of the works, which 
have come down to us from antiquity, and which are 
ascribed to their reputed writers with undoubting con- 
fidence, are so ascribed on evidence inferior to that on 
which the claims of the Evangelists rest. On this 
point therefore not a doubt should remain. 

Here I pause. The proofs of Christianity, which are 
involved in or founded on the facts now established, 
will be the subjects of future discussion. 



PART II. 



I have now stated some of the great facts relating 
to the origin of Christianity, of which we have clear 
and full proof. We know when and where this re- 
ligion sprung up. We know its Author, and the men 
whom he employed as the first propagators of his doc- 
trine. We know the great features of the religion as 
it was originally taught ; and still more, we have the 
writings of its first teachers, by which its precise char- 
acter is placed beyond doubt. I now proceed to lay 
before you some of the arguments in support of Chris- 
tianity, which are involved in or are founded on these 
facts. I must confine myself to a few, and will select 
those to which some justice may be done in the com- 
pass of a discourse. 

I. I believe Christianity to be true, or to have come 
from God, because it seems to me impossible to trace 
it to any other origin. It must have had a cause, and 
no other adequate cause can be assigned. The incon- 
gruity between this religion and all the circumstances 
amidst which it grew up, is so remarkable, that we 
are compelled to look beyond and above this world 
for its explanation. When I go back to the origin of 
Christianity, and place myself in the age and country 
of its birth, I can find nothing in the opinions of men, 
or in the state of society, which can account for its 



46 



DISCOURSE I. 



beginning or diffusion. There was no power on earth 
to create or uphold such a system. There was no- 
thing congenial with it in Judaism, inheathenism, or in 
the state of society among the most cultivated com- 
munities. If you study the religions, governments, 
and philosophical systems of that age, you will dis- 
cover in them not even a leaning towards Christianity. 
It sprung up in opposition to all, making no compro- 
mise with human prejudice or passion; and it sprung 
up, not only superior to all, but possessing at its very 
beginning a perfection, which has been the admiration 
of ages, and which, instead of being dimmed by time, 
has come forth more brightly, in proportion to the pro- 
gress of the human mind. 

I know, indeed, that at the origin of our religion, the 
aid heathen worship had fallen into disrepute among 
the enlightened classes through the Roman Empire, 
and was gradually losing its hold on the populace. 
Accordingly some have pretended that Christianity 
grew from the ruins of the ancient faith. But this 
is not true ; for the decline of the heathen systems 
was the product of causes singularly adverse to the 
origination of such a system as Christianity. One 
cause was the monstrous depravity of the age, which 
led multitudes to an utter scorn of religion in all its 
forms and restraints, and which prepared others to 
exchange their old worship for still grosser and more 
licentious superstitions, particularly for the magical 
arts of Egypt. Surely this corruption of manners, 
this wide-wasting moral pestilence, will not be consid- 
ered by any as a germ of the Christian religion. 
Another principal agent, in loosening the foundations 



DISCOURSE I. 



47 



of the old systems, was Philosophy, a noble effort in- 
deed of the human intellect, but one which did nothing 
to prepare the way for Christianity. The most popular 
systems of philosophy at the birth of Christianity were 
the Skeptical and the Epicurean, the former of which 
turned religion into a jest, denied the possibility of 
arriving at truth, and cast the mind on an ocean of doubt 
in regard to every subject of inquiry ; whilst the lat- 
ter placed happiness in ease, inculcated a calm in- 
difference both as to this world and the next, and 
would have set down the Christian doctrine of self- 
sacrifice, of suffering for truth and duty, as absolute 
insanity. Now I ask in what single point do these 
systems touch Christianity, or what impulse could 
they have given to its invention. There was indeed 
another philosophical sect of a nobler character ; I 
mean the Stoical. This maintained that virtue was 
the supreme good, and it certainly nurtured some 
firm and lofty spirits amidst the despotism which then 
ground all classes in the dust. But the self-reliance, 
sternness, apathy, and pride of the Stoic, his defi- 
ance and scorn of mankind, his want of sympathy 
with human suffering, and his extravagant exaggera- 
tions of his own virtue, placed this sect in singular 
opposition to Christianity; so that our religion might 
as soon have sprung from Skepticism and Epicurean- 
ism, as from Stoicism. There was another system, if 
it be worthy of the name, which prevailed in Asia, 
and was not unknown to the Jews, often called the 
Oriental philosophy. But this, though certainly an 
improvement on the common heathenism, was visiona- 
ry and mystical, and placed happiness in an intuition 



48 



DISCOURSE I. 



or immediate perception of God, which was to be gain- 
ed by contemplation and ecstasies, by emaciation of 
the body, and desertion of the world. I need not 
tell you how infinitely removed was the practical, be* 
nevolent spirit of Christianity, from this spurious sanc- 
tity and profitless enthusiasm. I repeat it then, that 
the various causes which were silently operating 
against the established heathen systems in the time 
of Christ had no tendency to suggest and spread such 
a religion as he brought, but were as truly hostile to 
it as the worst forms of heathenism. 

We cannot find then the origin of Christianity in 
the heathen world. Shall we look for it in the Jew- 
ish ? This topic is too familiar to need much exposi- 
tion. You know the character, feelings, expectations 
of the decendants of Abraham at the appearing of 
Jesus ; and you need not be told that a system, more 
opposed to the Jewish mind than that which he taught, 
cannot be imagined. There was nothing friendly to 
it in the soil or climate of Judea. As easily might the 
luxuriant trees of our forests spring from the sands 
of an Arabian desert. There was never perhaps a 
national character so deeply stamped as the Jewish. 
Ages after ages of unparalleled suffering have done 
little to wear away its indelible features. In the time 
of Jesus the whole influence of education and religion 
was employed to fix it in every member of the state. 
In the bosom of this community, and among its hum- 
blest classes, sprung up Christianity, a religion as un- 
fettered by Jewish prejudices, as untainted by the 
earthly, narrow views of the age, as if it had come 
from another world. Judaism was all around it, but 



DISCOURSE I. 



did not mar it by one trace, or sully its brightness by a 
single breath. Can we find, then, the cause of Chris- 
tianity in the Jewish any more than in the heathen 
world ? 

Christianity, I maintain, was not the growth of any 
of the circumstances, principles, or feelings of the age 
in which it appeared. In truth, one of the great dis- 
tinctions of the Gospel is, that it did not grow. The 
conception, which filled the mind of Jesus, of a religion 
more spiritual, generous, comprehensive, and unworldly 
than Judaism, and destined to take its place, was not 
of gradual formation. We detect no signs of it, and no 
efforts to realize it, before his time ; nor is there an 
appearance of its having been gradually matured by 
Jesus himself. Christianity was delivered from the first 
in its full proportions, in a style of singular freedom and 
boldness, and without a mark of painful elaboration. 
This suddenness with which this religion broke forth, 
this maturity of the system at the very moment of its 
birth, this absence of gradual developement, seems 
to me a strong mark of its divine original. If Chris- 
tianity be a human invention, then I can be pointed 
to something in the history of the age which impel- 
led and fitted the mind of its author to its production : 
then I shall be able to find some germ of it, some ap- 
proximation to it, in the state of things amidst which 
it first appeared. How was it, that from thick dark- 
ness there burst forth at once meridian light ? Were 
I told that the sciences of the civilized world had 
sprung up to perfection at once, amidst a barbarous 
horde, I should pronounce it incredible. Nor can 
I easily believe, that Christianity, the religion of un- 
5 



50 



DISCOURSE I. 



bounded love, a religion which broke down the bar- 
rier between Jew and Gentile, and the barriers be- 
tween nations, which proclaimed one Universal Father, 
which abolished forms and substituted the worship of 
the soul, which condemned alike the false greatness 
of the Roman and the false holiness of the Jew, and 
which taught an elevation of virtue, that the growing 
knowledge of succeeding ages has made more admira- 
ble ; — I say I cannot easily believe, that such a 
religion was suddenly, immediately struck out by hu- 
man ingenuity among a people, distinguished by bigot- 
ry and narrowness of spirit, by superstitious reliance 
on outward worship, by hatred and scorn of other na- 
tions, and by the proud, impatient hope of soon bend- 
ing all nations to their sway. 

Christianity, I repeat it, was not the growth of the 
age in which it appeared. It had no sympathy with 
that age. It was the echo of no sect or people. It 
stood alone at the moment of its birth. It used not 
a word of conciliation. It stooped to no error or pas- 
sion. It had its own tone, the tone of authority and 
superiority to the world. It struck at the root of what 
was every where called glory, reversed the judg- 
ments of all former ages, passed a condemning sentence 
on the idols of this world's admiration, and held forth, 
as the perfection of human nature, a spirit of love, 
so pure and divine, so free and full, so mild and for- 
giving, so invincible in fortitude yet so tender in its 
sympathies, that even now few comprehend it in its 
extent and elevation. Such a religion had not its 
origin in this world. 



DISCOURSE 1. 



51 



I have thus sought to unfold one of the evidences of 
Christianity. Its incongruity with the age of its birth, 
its freedom from earthly mixtures, its original, unbor- 
rowed, solitary greatness, and the suddenness with 
which it broke forth amidst the general gloom, these 
are to me strong indications of its divine descent. 
I cannot reconcile them with a human origin. 

II. Having stated the argument in favor of Chris- 
tianity derived from the impossibility of accounting for 
it by the state of the world at the time of its birth, I 
proceed in the second place to observe, that it cannot 
be accounted for by any of the motives which instigate 
men to the fabrication of religions. Its aims and 
objects are utterly irreconcilable with imposture, They 
are pure, lofty, and worthy of the most illustrious dele- 
gate of heaven. This argument deserves to be un- 
folded with some particularity. 

Men act from Motives. The inventors of religions 
have purposes to answer by them. Some systems 
have been framed by legislators to procure reverence 
to their laws, to bow the minds of the people to the 
civil power; and some have been forged by priests, to 
establish their sway over the multitude, to form them- 
selves into a dominant caste, and to extort the wealth 
of the industrious. Now I affirm, that Christianity 
cannot be ascribed to any selfish, ambitious, earthly 
motive. It is suited to no private end. Its purpose is 
generous and elevated, and thus bears witness to its 
heavenly origin. 

The great object which has seduced men to pretend 
to inspiration, and to spread false religions, has been 



52 



DISCOURSE I. 



Power, in one form or another, sometimes political 
power, sometimes spiritual, sometimes both. Is Chris- 
tianity to be explained by this selfish aim ? I answer. 
No. I affirm that the love of power is the last prin- 
ciple to be charged on the Founder of our religion. 
Christianity is distinguished by nothing more than by 
its earnest enforcement of a meek and humble spirit, 
and by its uncompromising reprobation of that passion 
for dominion, which had in all ages made the many 
the prey of the few, and had been worshipped as the 
attribute and impulse of the greatest minds. Its tone 
on this subject was original, and altogether its own, 
Jesus felt, as none had felt before, and as few feel now, 
the baseness of selfish ambition, and the grandeur of 
that benevolence which waives every mark of superi- 
ority, that it may more effectually bless mankind. 
He taught this lesson, not only in the boldest language, 
but, accommodating himself to the emblematical mode 
of religious instruction prevalent in the East, he set 
before his disciples a little child as their pattern, and 
himself washed their feet, His whole life was a com- 
mentary on his teaching. Not a trace of the passion 
for distinction and sway can be detected in the artless 
narratives of his historians. He wore no badge of su- 
periority, exacted no signs of homage, coveted no at- 
tentions, resented no neglect. He discouraged the 
ruler who prostrated himself before him with flattering 
salutations, but received with affectionate sensibility the 
penitent who bathed his feet with her tears, He lived 
with his obscure disciples as a friend, and mixed freely 
with all ranks of the community. He placed himself 
in the way of scorn, and advanced to meet a death. 



DISCOURSE I 



53 



more suited than any other imaginable event, to entail 
infamy on his name. Stronger marks of an infinite 
superiority to what the world calls glory cannot be 
conceived, than we meet in the history of Jesus. 

I have named two kinds of power, Political and 
Spiritual, as the ordinary objects of false religions. 
I wish to show you more particularly the elevation of 
Christianity above these aims. That the gospel was 
not framed for political purposes, is too plain to re- 
quire proof; but its peculiarity in this respect is not 
sufficiently considered. In ancient times, religion was 
every where a national concern. In Judea the union 
between religion and government was singularly close : 
and political sovereignty was one of the chief splen- 
dors, with which the Jewish imagination had sur- 
rounded the expected Messiah. That in such an age 
and country, a religion should arise, which hardly 
seems to know that government exists ; which makes 
no reference to it except in a few general inculcations 
of obedience to the civil powers ; which says not a 
word nor throws out a hint of allying itself with the 
state ; which assumes to itself no control of political 
affairs, and intermeddles with no public concerns ; 
which has no tendency, however indirect, to accumu- 
late power in particular hands ; which provides no form 
of national worship as a substitute for those which it 
was intended to destroy ; and which treats the distinc- 
tions of rank and office as worthless in comparison with 
moral influence and an unostentatious charitv ; — that 
such a religion should spring up in such a state of the 
world is a remarkable fact. We here see a broad line 
between Christianity and other systems, and a striking 
5* 



54 



DISCOURSE I. 



proof of its originality and elevation. Other systems 
were framed for communities ; Christianity approached 
men as Individuals. It proposed, not the glory of the 
state, but the perfection of the individual mind. So 
far from being contrived to build up political power, 
Christianity tends to reduce and gradually to supplant 
it, by teaching men to substitute the sway of truth and 
love for menace and force, by spreading through all 
ranks a feeling of brotherhood altogether opposed to 
the spirit of domination, and by establishing principles 
which nourish self-respect in every human being, and 
teach the obscurest to look with an undazzled eye on 
the most powerful of their race. 

Christianity bears no mark of the hands of a politi- 
cian. One of its main purposes is to extinguish the very 
spirit which the ambitious statesman most anxiously 
cherishes, and on which he founds his success. It pro- 
scribes a narrow patriotism, shows no mercy to the 
spirit of conquest, requires its disciples to love other 
countries as truly as their own, and enjoins a spirit of 
peace and forbearance in language so broad and earn- 
est, that not a few of its professors consider war in 
every shape and under all circumstances as a crime. 
The hostility between Christianity and all the political 
maxims of that age, cannot easily be comprehended 
at the present day. No doctrines were then so rooted, 
as that conquest was the chief interest of a nation, 
and that an exclusive patriotism was the first and no- 
blest of social virtues. Christianity, in loosening the 
tie which bound man to the state, that it might connect 
him with his race, opposed itself to what was deemed 
the vital principle of national safety and grandeur, and 



DISCOURSE I. 



55 



commenced a political revolution as original and un- 
sparing as the religious and moral reform at which 
it aimed. 

Christianity, then, was not framed for political pur- 
poses. But I shall be asked whether it stands equally 
clear of the charge of being intended to accumulate 
Spiritual power. Some may ask, whether its founder 
was not instigated by the passion for religious domina- 
tion, whether he did not aim to subdue men's minds, 
to dictate to the faith of the world, to make himself 
the leader of a spreading sect, to stamp his name as 
a prophet on human history, and thus to secure the 
prostration of multitudes to his will, more abject and 
entire than kings and conquerors can achieve. 

To this I might reply by what I have said of the 
character of Jesus, and of the spirit of his religion. 
It is plain, that the founder of Christianity had a per- 
ception, quite peculiar to himself, of the moral beauty 
and greatness of a disinterested, meek, and self-sacri- 
ficing spirit, and such a person was not likely to medi- 
tate the subjugation of the world to himself. But, 
leaving this topic, I observe, that on examining Chris- 
tianity we discover none of the features of a religion 
framed for spiritual domination. One of the infallible 
marks of such a system is, that it makes some terms 
with the passions and prejudices of men. It does not, 
cannot provoke and ally against itself all the powers, 
whether civil or religious, of the world. Christianity 
was throughout uncompromising and exasperating, 
and threw itself in the way of hatred and scorn. 
Such a system was any thing but a scheme for seiz- 
ing the spiritual empire of the world. 



56 



DISCOURSE I. 



There is another mark of a religion which springs 
from the love of spiritual domination. It infuses a 
servile spirit. Its author, desirous to stamp his name 
and image on his followers, has an interest in curbing 
the free action of their minds, imposes on them arbi- 
trary doctrines, fastens on them badges which may- 
separate them from others, and besets them with 
rules, forms, and distinctive observances, which may 
perpetually remind them of their relation to their chief. 
Now I see nothing in Christianity of this enslaving 
legislation. It has but one aim, which is, not to ex- 
alt its teacher, but to improve the disciple ; not to 
fasten Christ's name on mankind, but to breathe into 
them his spirit of universal love. Christianity is not a 
religion of forms. It has but two ceremonies, as simple 
as they are expressive ; and these hold so subordinate a 
place in the New Testament, that some of the best 
Christians question or deny their permanent obligation. 
Neither is it a narrow creed, or a mass of doctrines 
which find no support in our rational nature. It may 
be summed up in a few great, universal, immutable 
principles, which reason and conscience, as far as they 
are unfolded, adopt and rejoice in, as their own ever- 
lasting laws, and which open perpetually enlarging 
views to the mind. As far as I am a Christian, I am 
free. My religion lays on me not one chain. It -does 
not prescribe a certain range for my mind, beyond 
which nothing can be learned. It speaks of God as 
the Universal Father, and sends me to all his works 
for instruction. It does not hem me round with a 
mechanical ritual, does not enjoin forms, attitudes, and 
hours of prayer, does not descend to details of dress 



DISCOURSE t 



57 



and food, does not put on me one outward badge. It 
teaches and enkindles love to God, but commands no 
precise expressions of this sentiment. It prescribes 
prayer ; but lays the chief stress on the prayer of the 
closet, and treats all worship as worthless but that of 
the mind and heart. It teaches us to do good, but 
leaves us to devise for ourselves the means by which 
we may best serve mankind. In a word, the whole 
religion of Christ may be summed up in the love of God 
and of mankind, and it leaves the individual to cherish 
and express this spirit by the methods most accordant 
with his ow T n condition and peculiar mind. Christian- 
ity is eminently the religion of freedom. The views 
which it gives of the parental, impartial, universal 
goodness of God, and of the equal right of every hu- 
man being to inquire into his will, and its inculcations 
of candor, forbearance, and mutual respect, contribute 
alike to freedom of thought and enlargement of the 
heart. I repeat it, Christianity lays on me no chains. It 
is any thing but a contrivance for spiritual domination. 

I am aware that I shall be told, that Christianity, 
if judged by its history, has no claim to the honorable 
title of a religion of liberty. I shall be told, that no 
system of heathenism ever weighed more oppressively 
on men's souls ; that the Christian ministry has train- 
ed tyrants, who have tortured, now the body with ma- 
terial fire, and now the mind with the dread of fiercer 
flames, and who have proscribed and punished free 
thought and free speech as the worst of crimes. I 
have no disposition to soften the features of priestly 
oppression ; but I say, let not Christianity be made 
to answer for it. Christianity gives its ministers no 



58 



DISCOURSE I. 



such power. They have usurped it in the face of the 
sternest prohibitions, and in opposition to the whole 
spirit, of their Master. Christianity institutes no 
priesthood, in the original and proper sense of that 
word. It has not the name of priest among its offi- 
cers ; nor does it confer a shadow of priestly power. 
It invests no class of men with peculiar sanctity, as- 
cribing to their intercessions a special influence over 
God, or suspending the salvation of the private Chris- 
tian on ceremonies which they alone can administer. 
Jesus indeed appointed twelve of his immediate disci- 
ples to be the great instruments of propagating his 
religion ; but nothing can be simpler than their office. 
They went forth to make known through all nations 
the life, death, resurrection, and teachings of Jesus 
Christ ; and this truth they spread freely and without 
reserve, They did not give it as a mystery to a few 
who were to succeed them in their office, and ac- 
cording to whose direction it was to be imparted to 
others. They communicated it to the whole body of 
converts, to be their equal and common property, 
thus securing to all the invaluable rights of the mind. 
It is true, they appointed ministers or teachers in 
the various congregations which they formed ; and 
in that early age, when the religion was new and un- 
known, and when oral teaching was the only mode of 
communicating it, there seems to have been no way for 
its diffusion but this appointment of the most enlight- 
ened disciples to the work of instruction. But the New 
Testament no where intimates, that these men were 
to monopolize the privilege of studying their religion, 
or of teaching it to others. Not a single man can 



DISCOURSE I. 



59 



claim under Christianity the right to interpret it ex- 
clusively, or to impose his interpretation on his breth- 
ren. The Christian minister enjoys no nearer access 
to God, and no promise of more immediate illumina- 
tion, than other men. He is not entrusted with the 
Christian records more than they, and by these re- 
cords it is both their right and duty to try his instruc- 
tions. I have here pointed out a noble peculiarity of 
Christianity. It is the religion of liberty. It is in no 
degree tainted with the passion for spiritual power. 
" Call no man master, for ye are all brethren," is its 
free and generous inculcation, and to every form of 
freedom it is a friend and defence. 

We have seen that Christianity is not to be traced 
to the love of power, that master passion in the authors 
of false religions. I add, that no other object of a 
selfish nature could have led to its invention. The 
Gospel is not of this world. At the time of its origin 
no ingenuity could have brought it to bear on any 
private or worldly interest. Its spirit is self-denial. 
Wealth, ease, and honor it counts among the chief 
perils of life, and it insists on no duty more earnestly 
that on that of putting them to hazard and casting 
them from us, if the cause of truth and humanity so 
require. And these maxims were not mere specula- 
tions or rhetorical common-places in the times of 
Christ and his Apostles. The first propagators of 
Christianity were called upon to practise what they 
preached, to forego every interest on its account. 
They could not but foreknow, that a religion so un- 
compromising and pure would array against them the 
world. They did not merely take the chance of 



60 



DISCOURSE I. 



suffering, but were sure that the whole weight of scorn, 
pain, and worldly persecution would descend on their 
heads. How inexplicable, then, is Christianity by any 
selfish object, or any low aim ? 

The Gospel has but one object, and that too plain to 
be mistaken. In reading the New Testament, we see 
the greatest simplicity of aim. There is no lurking 
purpose, no by-end, betraying itself through attempts 
to disguise it. A perfect singleness of design runs 
through the records of the religion, and is no mean 
evidence of their truth. This end of Christianity is 
the moral perfection of the human soul. It aims and 
it tends, in all its doctrines, precepts, and promises, 
to rescue men from the power of moral evil ; to unite 
them to God by filial love, and to one another in the 
bonds of brotherhood ; to inspire them with a philan- 
thropy as meek and unconquerable as that of Christ ; 
and to kindle intense desire, hope, and pursuit of 
celestial and immortal virtue. 

And now, I ask, what is the plain inference from 
these views ? If Christianity can be traced to no sel- 
fish or worldly motive, if it w r as framed, not for domin- 
ion, not to compass any private purpose, but to raise 
men above themselves, and to conform them to God, 
can we help pronouncing it worthy of God ? And to 
whom but to God can we refer its origin ? Ought we 
not to recognise in the first propagators of such a faith 
the holiest of men, the friends of their race, and the 
messengers of Heaven ? Christianity, from its very na- 
ture, repels the charge of imposture. It carries in itself 
the proof of pure intention. Bad men could not have 
conceived it, much less have adopted it as the great 



DISCOURSE L 



61 



object of their lives. The supposition of selfish 
men giving up every private interest to spread a sys- 
tem which condemned themselves, and which tended 
only to purify mankind, is an absurdity as gross as 
can be found in the most irrational faith. Christianity, 
therefore, when tried by its Motives, approves itself 
to be of God. 

III. I now proceed to another and very important 
ground of my belief in the divine origin of Christian- 
ity. Its truth was attested by miracles. Its first 
teachers proved themselves the ministers of God by 
supernatural works. They did what man cannot do, 
what bore the impress of a divine power, and what 
thus sealed the divinity of their mission. A religion 
so attested must be true. This topic is a great one, 
and I ask your patient attention to it. 

I am aware that a strong prejudice exists in some 
minds against the kind of evidence which I have now 
adduced. Miracles seem to them to carry a confutation 
in themselves. The presumption against them seems 
next to infinite. In this respect, the present times 
differ from the past. There have been ages, when 
men believed any thing and every thing ; and the 
more monstrous the story, the more eagerly was it 
received by the credulous multitude. In the progress 
of knowledge men have come to see, that most of 
the prodigies and supernatural events in which their 
forefathers believed, were fictions of fancy, or fear, 
or imposture. The light of knowledge has put to 
flight the ghosts and witches which struck terror 
into earlier times. We now know, that not a few 
6 



62 



DISCOURSE 1. 



of the appearances in the heavens, which appalled na- 
tions, and were interpreted as precursors of divine 
vengeance, were natural effects. We have learned, too, 
that a highly excited imagination can work some -of 
the cures once ascribed to magic ; and the lesson 
taught us by these natural solutions of apparent mira- 
cles, is, that accounts of supernatural events are to 
be sifted with great jealousy and received with pecu- 
liar care. 

But the result of this new light thrown on nature 
and history is, that some are disposed to discredit all 
miracles indiscriminately. So many having proved 
groundless, a sweeping sentence of condemnation is 
passed on all. The human mind, by a natural reac- 
tion, has passed from extreme credulousness, to the 
excess of incredulity. Some persons are even hardy 
enough to deride the very idea of a miracle. They 
pronounce the order of nature something fixed and 
immutable, and all suspensions of it incredible. This 
prejudice, for such it is, seems to deserve particular 
attention ; for, until it is removed, the evidences of 
Christian miracles will have little weight. Let us ex- 
amfne it patiently and impartially. 

The skeptic tells me, that the order of nature is 
fixed. I ask him, By whom or by what is it fixed ? 
By an iron fate ? By an inflexible necessity ? Does 
not nature bear the signatures of an intelligent cause ? 
Does not the very idea of its order imply an ordaining 
or disposing mind ? Does not the universe, the more 
it is explored, bear increasing testimony to a Being 
superior to itself? Then the order of nature is fixed 
by a Will which can reverse it. Then a power equal 
to miracles exists. Then miracles are not incredible. 



DISCOURSE I. 



63 



It may be replied, that God indeed can work mira- 
cles, but that he ivill not. He will not ? And how 
does the skeptic know this ? Has God so told him ? 
This language does not become a being of our limited 
faculties ; and the presumptuousness which thus 
makes laws for the Creator, and restricts his agency 
to particular modes, is as little the spirit of true phi- 
losophy as of religion. 

The skeptic sees nothing in miracles, but ground 
of offence. To me they seem to involve in their very 
nature a truth so great, so vital, that I am not only 
reconciled to them, but am disposed to receive joyfully 
any sufficient proofs of their having been performed. 
To the skeptic, no principle is so important as the 
uniformity of nature, the constancy of its laws. To 
me there is a vastly higher truth, to which miracles 
bear witness, and to which I welcome their aid. 
What I wish chiefly to know is, that Mind is the su- 
preme power in the universe ; that matter is its in- 
strument and slave ; that there is a Will to which na- 
ture can offer no obstruction ; that God is unshackled 
by the laws of the universe, and controls them at his 
pleasure. This absolute sovereignty of the Divine 
Mind over the universe, is the only foundation of 
hope for the triumph of the human mind over matter, 
over physical influences, over imperfection and death. 
Now it is plain, that the strong impressions which we 
receive through the senses from the material creation, 
joined to our experience of its regularity, and to our 
instinctive trust in its future uniformity, do obscure 
this supremacy of God, do tempt us to ascribe a kind 
of omnipotence to nature's laws, and to limit our 



64 



DISCOURSE I. 



hopes to the good which is promised by these. There 
is a strong tendency in men to attach the idea of ne- 
cessity to an unchanging regularity of operation, and 
to imagine bounds to a being, who keeps one undeviat- 
ing path, or who repeats himself perpetually. Hence, 
I say, that I rejoice in miracles. They show and 
assert the supremacy of Mind in the universe. They 
manifest a spiritual power, which is in no degree en- 
thralled by the laws of matter. I rejoice in these 
witnesses to so great a truth. I rejoice in whatever 
proves, that this order of nature, which so often weighs 
on me as a chain, and which contains no promise of 
my perfection, is not supreme and immutable, and that 
the Creator is not restricted to the narrow modes of 
operation with which I am most familiar. 

Perhaps the form, in which the objection to mira- 
cles is most frequently expressed, is the following: "It 
is derogatory, " says the skeptic, " to the perfect wis- 
dom of God to suppose him to break in upon the or- 
der of his own works. It is only the unskilful artist 
who is obliged to thrust his hand into the machine 
for the purpose of supplying its defects, and of giv- 
ing it a new impulse by an immediate agency." To 
this objection I reply, that it proceeds on false ideas 
of God and of the creation. God is not an artist, but 
a Moral Parent and Governor ; nor is the creation a 
machine. If it were, it might be urged with greater 
speciousness that miracles cannot be needed or required. 
One of the most striking views of the creation is the 
contrast or opposition of the elements of which it con- 
sists. It includes not only matter but mind, not only 
lifeless and unconscious masses, but rational beings, 



DISCOURSE I. 



65 



free agents; and these are its noblest parts and ultimate 
objects. The material universe was framed not for 
itself, but for these. Its order was not appointed for 
its own sake, but to instruct and improve a higher 
rank of beings, the intelligent offspring of God : and 
whenever a departure from this order, that is. when- 
ever miraculous agency can contribute to the growth 
and perfection of his intelligent creatures, it is de- 
manded by his wisdom, goodness, and all his attri- 
butes. If the Supreme Being proposed only such 
ends as mechanism can produce, then he might have 
framed a machinery so perfect and sure as to need 
no suspension of its ordinary movements. But he has 
an incomparably nobler, end. His great purpose is 
to educate, to rescue from evil, to carry forward for 
ever the free, rational mind or soul : and who that un- 
derstands what a free mind is, and what a variety of 
teaching and discipline it requires, will presume to af- 
firm, that no lights or aids, but such as come to it 
through an invariable order of nature, are necessary 
to unfold it ? 

Much of the difficulty in regard to miracles, as I 
apprehend, would be removed, if we were to consider 
more particularly, that the chief distinction of intelligent 
beings is Moral Freedom, the power of determining 
themselves to evil as well as good, and consequentlv 
the power of involving themselves in great misery, 
When God made man, he framed not a machine, but 
a free being, who was to rise or fall according to his 
use or abuse of his powers. This capacity, at once 
the most glorious and the most fearful which we can 
conceive, shows us how the human race may have come 
6* 



66 



DISCOURSE I. 



into a condition, to which the illumination of nature 
was inadequate. In truth, the more we consider the 
freedom of intelligent beings, the more we shall ques- 
tion the possibility of establishing an unchangeable 
order which will meet fully all their wants ; for such 
beings, having of necessity a wide range of action, may 
bring themselves into a vast variety of conditions, and 
of course may come to need a relief not contained in 
the resources of nature. The history of the human 
race illustrates these truths. At the introduction of 
Christianity, the human family w r ere plunged into gross 
and debasing error, and the light of nature had not 
served for ages to guide them back to truth. Philoso- 
phy had done its best and failed. A new element, a 
new power seems to have been wanting to the progress 
the race. That in such an exigence miraculous aid 
should be imparted, accords with our best views of 
God. I repeat it ; were men mechanical beings, an 
undeviating order of nature might meet all their wants. 
They are free beings, who bear a moral relation to 
God, and as such may need, and are worthy of, a more 
various and special care than is extended over the 
irrational creation. 

When I examine nature, I see reasons for believing 
that it was not intended by God to be the only meth- 
od of instructing and improving mankind. I see rea- 
sons, as I think, why its order or regular course should 
be occasionally suspended, and why revelation should be 
joined to it in the work of carrying forward the race. 
I can offer only a few considerations on this point, but 
they seem to me worthy of serious attention. — The first 
is, that a fixed, invariable order of nature does not give 



DISCOURSE I. 



67 



us some views of God which are of great interest and 
importance, or at least it does not give them with that 
distinctness which we all desire. It reveals him as the 
Universal Sovereign who provides for the whole or for 
the general weal, but not, with sufficient clearness, as 
a tender father, interested in the Individual. I see, in 
this fixed order, his care of the race, but not his con- 
stant, boundless concern for myself. Nature speaks of 
a general Divinity, not of the friend and benefactor of 
each living soul. This is a necessary defect attending 
an inflexible, unvarying administration by general 
laws ; and it seems to require that God, to carry for- 
ward the race, should reveal himself by some other 
manner than by general laws. No conviction is more 
important to human improvement than that of God's 
paternal interest in every human being ; and how can 
he communicate this persuasion so effectually, as by 
suspending nature's order, to teach, through an inspired 
messenger, his paternal love ? 

My second remark is, that whilst nature teaches many 
important lessons, it is not a direct, urgent teacher. Its 
truths are not prominent, and consequently men may 
neglect it, and place themselves beyond its influence. 
For example, nature holds out the doctrine of One 
God, but does not compel attention to it. God's name 
is not written in the sky in letters of light, which all 
nations must read, nor sounded abroad in a voice, deep 
and awful as thunders, so that all must hear. Nature 
is a gentle, I had almost said, a reserved teacher, de- 
manding patient thought in the learner, and may there- 
fore be unheeded. Men may easily shut their ears 
and harden their hearts against its testimony to God. 



68 



DISCOURSE I. 



Accordingly we learn, that, at Christ's coming, almost all 
nations had lost the knowledge of the true glory of the 
Creator, and given themselves up to gross superstitions. 
To such a condition of the world, nature's indirect and 
unimposing mode of instruction is not fitted, and thus it 
furnishes a reason for a more immediate and impressive 
teaching. In such a season of moral darkness, was it not 
worthy of God to kindle another and more quickening 
beam ? When the long repeated and almost monoto- 
nous language of creation was not heard, was it un- 
worthy of God to speak with a new and more startling 
voice ? What fitter method was there for rousing those 
whom nature's quiet regularity could not teach, than to 
interrupt its usual course? 

I proceed to another reason for expecting revelation 
to be added to the light of nature. Nature, I have 
said, is not a direct or urgent teacher, and men may 
place themselves beyond its voice. I say, thirdly, 
that there is one great point, on which we are deeply 
concerned to know the truth, and which is yet taught so 
indistinctly by nature, that men, however disposed to 
leara, cannot by that light alone obtain full conviction. 
What, let me ask, is the question in which each man 
has the deepest interest ? It is this, Are we to live 
again ; or is this life all ? Does the principle of thought 
perish with the body ; or does it survive ? And if it 
survive, where? how? in what condition? under what 
law ? There is an inward voice which speaks of judg- 
ment to come. Will judgment indeed come ? and if so, 
what award may we hope or fear ? The Future state 
of man, this is the great question forced on us by our 
changing life and by approaching death. I will not 



DISCOURSE I. 



69 



say, that on this topic nature throws no light. I think 
it does : and this light continually grows brighter to 
them whose eyes revelation has couched and made 
strong to see. But nature alone does not meet our 
wants. I might prove this by referring you to the 
ages preceding Christ, when the anxious spirit of man 
constantly sought to penetrate the gloom beyond the 
grave, when imagination and philosophy alike plunged 
into the future, but found no resting-place. But every 
man must feel, that, left to nature as his only guide, he 
must wander in doubt, as to the life to come. Where, 
but from God himself, can I learn my destination ? I 
ask at the mouth of the tomb for intelligence of the 
departed, and the tomb gives me no reply. I examine 
the various regions of nature, but I can discover na 
process for restoring the mouldering body, and no 
sign or track of the spirit's ascent to another sphere. 
I see the need of a power above nature to restore 
or perpetuate life after death ; and if God intended 
to give assurance of this life, I see not how he can do 
it but by supernatural teaching, by a miraculous rev- 
elation. Miracles are the appropriate, and would seem 
to be the only mode of placing beyond doubt man's 
future and immortal bein2: : and no miracles can be 
conceived so peculiarly adapted to this end as the very 
ones which hold the highest place in Christianity, — 
I mean the resurrection of Lazarus, and, still more, the 
resurrection of Jesus. No man will deny, that, of all 
truths, a future state is most strengthening to virtue and 
consoling to humanity. Is it then unworthy of God to 
employ miracles for the awakening or the confirmation 
of this hope ? May they not even be expected, if nature^ 



70 



DISCOURSE I. 



as we have seen, sheds but a faint light on this most 
interesting of all verities ? 

I add one more consideration in support of the posi- 
tion, that nature was not intended to be God's only 
method of teaching mankind. In surveying the human 
mind, we discover a principle which singularly fits it to 
be wrought upon and. benefited by miraculous agency, 
and which might therefore lead us to expect such 
interposition. I refer to that principle of our nature, 
by which we become in a measure insensible or indif- 
ferent to what is familiar, but are roused to attention 
and deep interest by what is singular, strange, super- 
natural. This principle of wonder is an important part 
of our constitution ; and that God should employ it in 
the work of our education, is what reason might antici- 
pate. I see, then, a foundation for miracles in the hu- 
man mind ; and when I consider that the mind is God's 
noblest work, I ought to look to this as the interpreter 
of his designs. We are plainly so constituted, that 
the order of nature, the more it is fixed, excites us the 
less. Our interest is blunted by its ceaseless uniform- 
ity. On the contrary, departures from this order pow- 
erfully stir the soul, break up its old and slumbering 
habits of thought, turn it with a new solicitude to the 
Almighty Interposer, and prepare it to receive with 
awe the communications of his will. Was it unworthy 
of God who gave us this sensibility to the wonderful, 
to appeal to it for the recovery of his creatures to 
himself? 

I here close my remarks on the great objection of 
skepticism, that miracles are inconsistent with the 
divine perfections ; that the Supreme Being, having 



DISCOURSE I. 



71 



established an order of operation, cannot be expected 
to depart from it. To me, such reasoning, if reasoning 
it may be called, is of no weight. When I consider 
God's paternal and moral relation to mankind, and his 
interest in their progress ; when I consider how accord- 
ant it is with his character that he should make himself 
known to them by methods most fitted to awaken the 
mind and heart to his goodness ; when I consider the 
need we have of illumination in regard to the future 
life more distinct and full than the creation affords ; 
when I consider the constitution and condition of man, 
his free agency, and the corruption into which he had 
fallen : w r hen I consider how little benefit a being so de- 
praved was likely to derive from an order of nature 
to which he had grown familiar, and how plainly the 
mind is fitted to be quickened by miraculous interposi- 
tion ; — I say, when I take all these things into view, I 
see, as I think, a foundation in nature for supernatural 
light and aid, and I discern in a miraculous revelation, 
such as Christianity, a provision suited at once to the 
frame and wants of the human soul, and to the perfec- 
tions of its Author. 

There are other objections to miracles, though less 
avowed, than that which I have now considered, yet 
perhaps not less influential, and probably operating on 
many minds so secretly as to be unperceived. At two 
of these I will just glance. Not a few, I am confident, 
have doubts of the Christian miracles, because they 
see none now. Were their skepticism to clothe itself 
in language it would say, u Show us miracles, and we 
will believe them. We suspect them, because they 
are confined to the past." Now this objection is a 



72 



DISCOURSE I. 



childish one. It may be resolved into the principle, 
that nothing in the past is worthy of belief, which is 
not repeated in the present. Admit this, and where 
will incredulity stop ? How many forms and institutions 
of society, recorded in ancient history, have passed 
away. Has history then no title to respect ? If indeed 
the human race were standing still, if one age were 
merely a copy of preceding ones, if each had precisely 
the same wants, then the miracles required at one 
period would be reproduced in all. But who does not 
know that there is a progress in human affairs ? that 
formerly mankind were in a different stage from that 
through which they are now passing ? that of course 
the education of the race must be varied ? and that 
miracles, important once, may be superfluous now ? 
Shall we bind the Creator to invariable modes of teach- 
ing and training a race whose capacities and wants are 
undergoing a perpetual change ? Because in periods of 
thick darkness God introduced a new religion by su- 
pernatural works, shall we expect these works to be 
repeated, when the darkness is scattered and their end 
attained ? Who does not see that miracles, from their 
very nature, must be rare, occasional, limited ? Would 
not their power be impaired by frequency ? and would 
it not wholly cease, were they so far multiplied as to 
seem a part of the order of nature ? 

The objection I am now considering shows us the 
true character of skepticism. Skepticism is essentially 
a narrowness of mind, which makes the present mo- 
ment the measure of the past and future. It is the 
creature of sense. In the midst of a boundless uni- 
verse, it can conceive no mode of operation but what 



DISCOURSE I. 



73 



falls under its immediate observation. The visible, 
the present is every thing to the unbeliever. Let him 
but enlarge his views ; let him look round on the im- 
mensity of the universe ; let him consider the infinity 
of resources which are comprehended in omnipotence ; 
let him represent to himself the manifold stages through 
which the human race is appointed to pass; let him 
remember that the education of the ever-growing mind 
must require a great variety of discipline ; and especially 
let him admit the sublime thought, of which the germ 
is found in nature, that man was created to be trained 
for, and to ascend to an incomparably higher order of 
existence than the present, — and he will see the child- 
ishness of making his narrow experience the standard 
of all that is past and is to come in human history. 

It is strange indeed, that men of science should fall 
into this error. The improved science of the present 
day teaches them, that this globe of ours, which seems 
so unchangeable, is not now what it was a few thousand 
years ago. They find proofs by digging into the earth, 
that this globe was inhabited, before the existence of 
the human race, by classes of animals which have 
perished, and the ocean peopled by races now un- 
known, and that the human race are occupying a 
ruined and restored world. Men of science should 
learn to free themselves from the vulgar narrowness 
which sees nothing in the past but the present, and 
should learn the stupendous and infinite variety of the 
dispensations of God, 

There is another objection to miracles, and the last to 
be now considered, which is drawn from the well-known 
fact, that pretended miracles crowd the pages of ancient 
7 



74 



DISCOURSE L 



history. No falsehoods, we are told, have been more 
common than accounts of prodigies, and therefore the 
mirculous character of Christianity is a presumption 
against its truth. I acknowledge that this argument 
has its weight; and I am ready to say, that, did I know 
nothing of Christianity, but that it was a religion full 
of miracles ; did I know nothing of its doctrines, its 
purpose, its influences, and whole history, I should sus- 
pect it as much as the unbeliever. There is a strong 
presumption against miracles, considered nakedly, or 
separated from their design and from all circumstances 
which explain and support them. There is a like pre- 
sumption against events not miraculous, but of an extra- 
ordinary character. But this is only a reason for severe 
scrutiny and slow belief, not for resisting strong and 
multiplied proofs. I blame no man for doubting a 
report of miracles when first brought to his ears. Thou- 
sands of absurd prodigies have been created by igno- 
rance and fanaticism, and thousands more been forged 
by imposture. I invite you, then, to try scrupulously 
the miracles of Christianity; and if they bear the 
marks of the superstitious legends of false religions, do 
not spare them. I only ask for them a fair hearing and 
calm investigation. 

It is plainly no sufficient argument for rejecting all 
miracles, that men have believed in many which are 
false. If you go back to the times when miraculous 
stories were swallowed most greedily, and read the 
books then written on history, geography, and natural 
science, you will find all of them crowded with error; 
but do they therefore contain nothing worthy your 
trust ? Is there not a vein of truth running through 



DISCOURSE I. 



75 



the prevalent falsehood ? And cannot a sagacious mind 
very often detach the real from the fictitious, explain 
the origin of many mistakes, distinguish the judicious 
and honest from the credulous or interested narrator, 
and by a comparison of testimonies detect the latent 
truth ? Where will you stop, if you start with believing 
nothing on points where former ages have gone astray ? 
You must pronounce all religion and all morality to be 
delusion, for on both topics men have grossly erred. 
Nothing is more unworthy of a philosopher, than to 
found a universal censure on a limited number of un- 
favorable facts. This is much like the reasoning of 
the misanthrope, who, because he sees much vice, infers 
that there is no virtue, and, because he has sometimes 
been deceived, pronounces all men hypocrites. 

I maintain that the multiplicity of false miracles, 
far from disproving, gives support to those on which 
Christianity rests ; for, first, there is generally some 
foundation for falsehood, especially when it obtains 
general belief. The love of truth is an essential prin- 
ciple of human nature ; men generally embrace error 
on account of some precious ingredient of truth mixed 
with it, and for the time inseparable from it. The 
universal belief of past ages in miraculous interposi- 
tions, is to me a presumption that miracles have enter- 
ed into human history. Will the unbeliever say, that 
it only shows the insatiable thirst of the human mind 
for the supernatural? I reply, that, in this reasoning, 
he furnishes a weapon against himself; for a strong 
principle in the human mind, impelling men to seek 
for and to cling to miraculous agency, affords a pre- 
sumption that the Author of our being, by whom this 



76 



DISCOURSE I. 



thirst for the supernatural was given, intended to fur- 
nish objects for it, and to assign it a place in the edu- 
cation of the race. 

But I observe, in the next place, and it is an obser- 
vation of great importance, that the exploded mira- 
cles of ancient times, if carefully examined, not only 
furnish a general presumption in favor of the existence 
of genuine ones, but yield strong proof of the truth 
of those in particular upon which Christianity rests. 
I say to the skeptic, You affirm nothing but truth 
in declaring history to abound in false miracles ; I 
agree with you in exploding by far the greater part 
of the supernatural accounts of which ancient religions 
boast. But how do we know these to be false ? We 
do not so judge without proofs. We discern in them 
the marks of delusion. Now I ask you to examine 
these marks, and then to answer me honestly, whether 
you find them in the miracles of Christianity. Is 
there not a broad line between Christ's works and 
those which we both agree in rejecting ? I maintain 
that there is, and that nothing but ignorance can con- 
found the Christian miracles with the prodigies of 
heathenism. The contrast between them is so strong 
as to forbid us to refer them to a common origin. The 
miracles of superstition carry the brand of falsehood 
in their own nature, and are disproved by the circum- 
stances under which they were imposed on the mul- 
titude. The objects, for which they are said to have 
been wrought, are such as do not require or justify a 
divine interposition. Many of them are absurd, child- 
ish, or extravagant, and betray a weak intellect or dis- 
eased imagination. Many can be explained by natu- 



DISCOURSE I. 



ral causes. Many are attested by persons who lived 
in different countries and ages, and enjoyed no oppor- 
tunities of inquiring into their truth. We can see 
the origin of many in the self-interest of those who 
forged them, and can account for their reception by 
the condition of the world. In other words, these 
spurious miracles were the natural growth of the igno- 
rance, passions, prejudices, and corruptions of the times, 
and tended to confirm them. Now it is not enough 
to say, that these various marks of falsehood cannot 
be found in the Christian miracles. We find in them 
characters directly the reverse. They were wrought 
for an end worthy of God ; they were wrought in 
an age of improvement ; they are marked by a 
majesty, beneficence, unostentatious simplicity, and 
wisdom, which separate them immeasurably from the 
dreams of a disordered fancy or the contrivances of 
imposture. They can be explained by no interests, 
passions, or prejudices of men. They are parts of a 
religion, which was singularly at variance with estab- 
lished ideas and expectations, which breathes purity 
and benevolence, which transcended the improvements 
of the age, and which thus carries with it the presump- 
tion of a divine original. Whence this immense dis- 
tance between the two classes of miracles ? Will 
you trace both to one source, and that a polluted one ? 
Will you ascribe to one spirit, works as different as 
light and darkness, as earth and heaven ? I am not 
then shaken in my faith by the false miracles of other 
religions. I have no desire to keep them out of sight ; 
I summon them as my witnesses. They show me 

how naturally imposture and superstition leave the 
7 * 



78 



DISCOURSE I. 



stamp of themselves on their fictions. They show 
how man, when he aspires to counterfeit God's agency, 
betrays more signally his impotence and folly. When 
I place side by side the mighty works of Jesus and 
the prodigies of heathenism, I see that they can no more 
be compared with one another, than the machinery 
and mock thunders of the theatre can be likened to 
the awful and beneficent powers of the universe. 

In the preceding remarks on miracles, I have aimed 
chiefly to meet those general objections by which many 
are prejudiced against supernatural interpositions uni- 
versally, and are disinclined to weigh any proof in their 
support. Hoping that this weak skepticism has been 
shown to want foundation in nature and reason, I 
proceed now to state more particularly the principal 
grounds on which I believe that the miracles ascribed 
to Jesus and the first propagators of Christianity, were 
actually wrought in attestation of its truth. 

The evidences of facts are of two kinds, presump- 
tive and direct, and both meet in support of Christian 
miracles. First, there are strong presumptions in its 
favor. To this class of proofs, belong the views al- 
ready given of the accordance of revelation and mira- 
cles with the wants and principles of human nature, 
with the perfections of God, with his relations to 
his human family, and with his ordinary providence. 
These I need not repeat. I will only observe that a 
strong presumption in support of the miracles arises 
from the importance of the religion to which they be- 
long. If I were told of supernatural works performed 
to prove, that three are more than one, or that human 
life requires food for its support, I should know that 



DISCOURSE I. 



79 



they were false. The presumption against them 
would be invincible. The author of nature could 
never supersede its wise and stupendous order to 
teach what falls within the knowledge of every child. 
Extraordinary interpositions of God suppose that 
truths of extraordinary dignity and benefice n ce are 
to be imparted. Now, in Christianity I find truths 
of transcendent importance, which throw into shade 
all the discoveries of science, and which give a new 
character, aim, and interest to our existence. Here 
is a fit occasion for supernatural interposition. A pre- 
sumption exists in favor of miracles, by which a reli- 
gion so worthy of God is sustained. 

But a presumption in favor of facts, is not enough. 
It indeed adds much force to the direct proofs ; still 
these are needed, nor are they wanting to Christianity. 
The direct proofs of facts are chiefly of two kinds ; 
they consist of testimony, oral or written, and of 
effects, traces, monuments, which the facts have left 
behind them. The Christian miracles are supported by 
both. - — We have first the most unexceptionable Tes- 
timony, nothing less than that of contemporaries and 
eye-witnesses, of the companions of Jesus and the first 
propagators of his religion. We have the testimony of 
men who could not have been deceived as to the facts 
which they report ; who bore their witness amidst 
perils and persecutions ; who bore it on the very spot 
where their Master lived and died ; who had nothing 
to gain, and every thing to lose, if their testimony 
were false ; whose writings breathe the sincerest love 
of virtue and of mankind ; and who at last sealed their 
attestations with their blood. More unexceptionable 
witnesses to facts cannot be produced or conceived. 



so 



DISCOURSE L 



Do you say, " These witnesses lived ages ago ; could 
we hear these accounts from their own lips, we should 
be satisfied"? I answer, You have something better 
than their own lips, or than their own w T ord taken 
alone. You have, as has been proved, their writings, 
Perhaps you hear with some surprise that a book may 
be a better witness than its author ; but nothing is more 
true, and I will illustrate it by an imaginary case in our 
own times. 

Suppose, then, that a man claiming to be an eye- 
witness should relate to me the events of the three 
memorable days of July, in which the last revolution of 
France was achieved ; suppose next, that a book, a his- 
tory of that revolution, published and received as true in 
France, should be sent to me from that country. Which 
is the best evidence of the facts? I say the last. A 
single witness may deceive : but that a writer should 
publish in France the history of a revolution, which 
never occurred there, or which differed essentially from 
the true one, is, in the highest degree, improbable ; and 
that such a history should obtain currrency, that it 
should not be instantly branded as a lie, is utterly im- 
possible. A history received by a people as true, 
not only gives us the testimony of the writer, but 
the testimony of the nation among whom it obtains 
credit. It is a concentration of thousands of voices, 
of many thousand witnesses. I say, then, that the 
writings of the first teachers of Christianity, received 
as they were by the multitude of Christians in their 
own times and in those which immediately followed, 
are the testimonies of that multitude as well as of the 
writers. Thousands, nearest to the events, join in bear- 
ing testimony to the Christian miracles. 



DISCOURSE I. 



81 



But there is another class of evidence, sometimes 
more powerful than direct witnesses, and this belongs 
to Christianity. Facts are often placed beyond doubt 
by the effects which they leave behind them. This is 
the case with the miracles of Christ. Let me explain 
this branch of evidence. I am told, when absent and 
distant from your city, that on a certain day, a tide, such 
as had never been known, rose in your harbour, over- 
flowed your wharves, and rushed into your streets; I 
doubt the fact ; but hastening here, I see what were 
once streets, strewed with seaweed, and shells, and the 
ruins of houses, and I cease to doubt. A witness may 
deceive, but such effects cannot lie. All great events 
leave effects, and these speak directly of the cause. 
What, I ask, are the proofs of the American revolu- 
tion ? . Have we none but written or oral testimony ? 
Our free constitution, the whole form of our society, 
the language and spirit of our laws, all these bear 
witness to our English origin, and to our successful 
conflict for independence. Now the miracles of Chris- 
tianity have left effects, which equally attest their 
reality, and cannot be explained without them. I go 
back to the age of Jesus Christ, and I am immediately 
struck with the commencement and rapid progress of 
the most remarkable revolution in the annals of the 
world. I see a new religion, of a character altogether 
its own, which bore no likeness to any past or existing 
faith, spreading in a few years through all civilized na^ 
tions, and introducing a new era, a new state of society, 
a change of the human mind, which has broadly dis- 
tinguished all following ages. Here is a plain fact, 
which the skeptic will not deny, however he may 



62 



DISCOURSE I. 



explain it. I see this religion issuing from an obscure, 
despised, hated people. Its founder had died on the 
cross, a mode of punishment as disgraceful as the pil- 
lory or gallows at the present day. lis teachers were 
poor men. without rank, office, or education, taken from 
the fishing-boat and other occupations which had never 
furnished teachers to mankind. I see these men begin- 
ning their work on the spot where their Master's blood 
had been shed, as of a common malefactor : and I hear 
them summoning first his murderers, and then all na- 
tions and all ranks, the sovereign on the throne, the 
priest in the temple, the great and the learned, as well 
as the poor and the ignorant, to. renounce the faith and 
the worship which had been hallowed by the venera- 
tion of all ages, and to take the yoke of their crucified 
Lord. I see passion and prejudice, the sword of the 
magistrate, the curse of the priest, the scorn of the 
philosopher, and the fury of the populace joined to 
crush this common enemy ; and yet. without a human 
weapon and in opposition to all human power. I see 
the humble Apostles of Jesus winning their way. over- 
powering prejudice, breaking the ranks of their oppo- 
sers. changing enemies into friends, breathing into 
multitudes a calm spirit of martyrdom, and carrying to 
the bounds of civilization, and even into half civilized 
regions, a religion which has contributed to advance 
society more than all other causes combined. Here is 
the effect. Here is a monument more durable than pil- 
lars or triumphal arches. Xow I ask for an explanation 
of these effects. If Jesus Christ and his Apostles were 
indeed sent and empowered by God. and wrought mira- 
cles in attestation of their mission, then the establish- 



DISCOURSE I. 



83 



ment of Christianity is explained. Suppose them, on 
the other hand, to have been insane enthusiasts, or selfish 
impostors, left to meet the whole strength of human op- 
position, with nothing but their own power or rather their 
own weakness, and you have no cause for the stupen- 
dous effect I have described. Such men could no 
more have changed the face of the world, than they 
could have turned back rivers to their sources, sunk 
mountains into valleys, or raised valleys to the skies. 
Christianity then has not only the evidence of unex- 
ceptionable witnesses, but that of effects ; a proof 
which will grow stronger by comparing its progress 
with that of other religions, such as Mahometanism, 
which sprung from human passions, and were advanced 
by human power. 

IV. Having given my views on the subject of 
Christian miracles, I now pass to the last topic of this 
discourse. Its extent and importance will lead me to 
enlarge upon it in a subsequent discourse ; but a discus- 
sion of Christian evidences, in which it should find no 
place, would be essentially defective. I refer to the 
proof of Christianity derived from the Character of its 
Author. 

The character of Jesus was Original. He formed 
a new era in the moral history of the human race. His 
perfection was not that of his age, nor a copy of the 
greatness which had long engrossed the world's admira- 
tion. Jesus stood apart from other men. He borrowed 
from none, and leaned on none. Surrounded by men of 
low thoughts, he rose to the conception of a higher form 
of human virtue than had yet been realized or imagined. 



84 



DISCOURSE I. 



and deliberately devoted himself to its promotion, as 
the supreme object of his life and death. Conscious of 
being dedicated to this great work, he spoke with a 
calm dignity, an unaffected elevation, which separated 
him from all other teachers. Unsupported, he never 
w T avered ; sufficient to himself, he refused alliance with 
wealth or power. Yet, with all this self-subsistence 
and uncompromising energy, his character was the 
mildest, the gentlest, the most attractive, ever mani- 
fested among men. It could not have been a fiction, 
for who could have conceived it, or who could have 
embodied the conception in such a life as Jesus is said 
to have led, in actions, words, manners so natural and 
unstudied, so imbued with reality, so worthy of the 
Son of God ? 

The great distinction of Jesus was a philanthropy 
without mixture and without bounds ; a philanthropy, 
uniting grandeur and meekness in beautiful proportions; 
a philanthropy, as wise as it was fervent, which com- 
prehended the true wants and the true good of man, 
which compassionated, indeed, his sufferings from 
abroad, but which saw in the soul the deep fountain of 
his miseries, and labored, by regenerating this, to bring 
him to a pure and enduring happiness. So peculiar, 
so unparallelled was the benevolence of Jesus, that it 
has impressed itself on all future times. There went 
forth a virtue, a beneficent influence from his character, 
which operates even now. Since the death of Christ, 
a spirit of humanity, unknown before, has silently dif- 
fused itself over a considerable portion of the earth. 
A new standard of virtue has gradually possessed itself 
of the veneration of men. A new power has been 



DISCOURSE I. 



85 



acting on society, which has done more than all other 
causes combined, to disarm the selfish passions, and to 
bind men strongly to one another and to God. What a 
monument have we here to the virtue of Jesus ! and 
if Christianity has such a Founder, it must have come 
from Heaven. 

There are other remarkable proofs of the power and 
elevation of the character of Christ. It has touched 
and conciliated not a few of the determined adversa- 
ries of his religion. Infidelity, whilst it has laid un- 
sparing hands on the system, has generally shrunk 
from offering violence to its Author. In truth, unbe- 
lievers have occasionally borne eloquent testimony to 
the benignant and celestial virtues of Jesus ; and I re- 
cord this with pleasure, not only as honorable to 
Christianity, but as showing that unbelief does not uni- 
versally sear the moral feelings, or breathe hostility to 
goodness. Nor is this all. The character of Christ has 
withstood the most deadly and irresistible foe of error 
and unfounded claims, I mean, Time. It has lost 
nothing of its elevation by the improvements of ages. 
Since he appeared, society has gone forward, men's 
views have become enlarged, and philosophy has risen 
to conceptions of far purer virtues than were the boast 
of antiquity. But, however the human mind may have 
advanced, it must still look upward, if it would see 
and understand Christ, He is still above it. Nothing 
purer, nobler, has yet dawned on human thoughts. 
Then Christianity is true. The delineation of Jesus 
in the Gospels, so w T arm with life, and so unrivalled in 
loveliness and grandeur, required the existence of an 
original. To suppose that this character was invented 
8 



86 



DISCOURSE I. 



by unprincipled men, amidst Jewish and heathen 
darkness, and was then imposed as a reality in the very 
age of the founder of Christianity, argues on excess of 
credulity, and a strange ignorance of the powers and 
principles of human nature. The character of Jesus 
was real ; and if so, Jesus must have been what he 
professed to be, the Son of God and the revealer of 
his mercy and his will to mankind. 

I have now completed what I proposed in this dis- 
course. I have laid before you some of the principal 
evidences of Christianity. I have aimed to state them 
without exaggeration. That an honest mind, which 
thoroughly comprehends them, can deny their force, 
seems to me hardly possible. Stronger proofs may 
indeed be conceived ; but it is doubtful, whether these 
could be given in consistency with our moral nature, 
and with the moral government of God. Such a gov- 
ernment requires, that truth should not be forced on the 
mind, but that we should be left to gain it, by an upright 
use of our understandings, and by conforming ourselves 
to what we have already learned. God might indeed 
shed on us an overpowering light, so that it would be 
impossible for us to lose our way; but in so doing, he 
would annihilate an important part of our present pro- 
bation. It is then no objection to Christianity, that 
its evidences are not the very strongest which might 
be given, and that they do not extort universal assent. 
In this respect, it accords with other great truths. 
These are not forced on our belief. Whoever will, may 
shut his eyes on their proofs, and array against them 
objections. In the measure of evidence with which 



DISCOURSE I. 



87 



Christianity is accompanied, I see a just respect for 
the freedom of the mind, and a wise adaptation to 
that moral nature, which it is the great aim of this 
religion to carry forward to perfection. 

I close as I began. I am not ashamed of the gospel 
of Christ ; for it is True. It is true ; and its truth is to 
break forth more and more gloriously. Of this I have 
not a doubt. I know indeed that our religion has 
been questioned even by intelligent and good men ; but 
this does not shake my faith in its divine original or 
in its ultimate triumphs. Such men have questioned 
it, because they have known it chiefly by its corrup- 
tions. In proportion as its original simplicity shall 
be restored, the doubts of the well-disposed will 
yield. I have no fears from infidelity ; especially 
from that form of it, which some are at this moment 
laboring to spread through our country ; I mean, that 
insane, desperate unbelief, which strives to quench 
the light of nature as well as of revelation, and to 
leave us, not only without Christ, but without God. 
This I dread no more, than I should fear the efforts 
of men to pluck the sun from his sphere, or to storm 
the skies with the artillery of the earth. We were 
made for religion ; and unless the enemies of our faith 
can change our nature, they will leave the foundation 
of religion unshaken. The human soul was created 
to look above material nature. It wants a Deity 
for its love and trust, an Immortality for its hope. 
It wants consolations not found in philosophy, wants 
strength in temptation, sorrow, and death, which hu- 
man wisdom cannot minister ; and knowing, as I do, 



88 



DISCOURSE I. 



that Christianity meets these deep wants of men, I 
have no fear or doubt as to its triumphs. Men cannot 
long live without religion. In France there is a 
spreading dissatisfaction with the skeptical spirit of 
the past generation. A philosopher in that country 
would now blush to quote Voltaire as an authority in 
religion. Already Atheism is dumb where once it 
seemed to bear sway. The greatest minds in France 
are working back their way to the light of truth. 
Many of them indeed cannot yet be called Christians ; 
but their path, like that of the wise men of old who 
came star-guided from the East, is towards Christ. I 
am not ashamed of the Gospel, of Christ. It has an 
immortal life, and will gather strength from the vio- 
lence of its foes. It is equal to all the wants of men. 
The greatest minds have found in it the light which 
they most anxiously desired. The most sorrowful 
and broken spirits have found in it a healing balm for 
their woes. It has inspired the sublimest virtues and 
the loftiest hopes. For the corruptions of such a re- 
ligion I weep, and I should blush to be their advocate ; 
but of the Gospel itself I can never be ashamed. 



DISCOURSE II. 



MATTHEW xvii. 5. 

THIS IS MY BELOVED SON, IN WHOM I AM WELL 
PLEASED. 

The character of Christ may be studied for various 
purposes. It is singularly fitted to call forth the heart, 
to awaken love, admiration, and moral delight. As an 
example, it has no rival. As an evidence of his reli- 
gion, perhaps it yields to no other proof ; perhaps no 
other has so often conquered unbelief. It is chiefly 
to this last view of it, that I now ask your attention. 
The character of Christ is a strong confirmation of 
the truth of his religion. As such, I would now place it 
before you. I shall not, however, think only of confirm- 
ing your faith ; the very illustrations, which I shall 
adduce for this purpose, will show the claims of Jesus 
to our reverence, obedience, imitation, and fervent 
love. 

The more we contemplate Christ's character, as 
exhibited in the Gospel, the more we shall be impressed 
with its genuineness and reality. It was plainly drawn 
from the life. The narratives of the Evangelists bear 
8* 



90 



DISCOURSE II. 



the marks of truth, perhaps beyond all other histories. 
They set before us the most extraordinary being who 
ever appeared on earth, and yet they are as artless as 
the stories of childhood. The authors do not think of 
themselves. They have plainly but one aim, to show 
us their Master ; and they manifest the deep veneration 
which he inspired, by leaving him to reveal himself, by 
giving us his actions and sayings without comment, ex- 
planation, or eulogy. You see in these narratives no var- 
nishing, no high coloring, no attempts to make his ac- 
tions striking, or to bring out the beauties of his char- 
acter. We are never pointed to any circumstance 
as illustrative of his greatness. The Evangelists write 
with a calm trust in his character, with a feeling that 
it needed no aid from their hands, and with a deep 
veneration, as if comment or praise of their own were 
not worthy to mingle with the recital of such a life. 

It is the effect of our familiarity with the history of 
Jesus, that we are not struck by it, as we ought to be. 
We read it before we are capable tof understanding 
its excellence. His stupendous wo^s become as fa- 
miliar to us as the events of ordinary life, and his 
high offices seem as much matters of course, as the 
common relations which men bear to each other. On 
this account, it is fit for the ministers of religion to 
do what the Evangelists did not attempt, to offer com- 
ments on Christ's character, to bring out its features, 
to point men to its higher beauties, to awaken their 
awe by unfolding its wonderful majesty. Indeed, one 
of our most important functions, as teachers, is to give 
freshness and vividness to truths which have become 
worn, I had almost said tarnished, by long and famil- 



DISCOURSE II. 



91 



iar handling. We have to fight with the power of 
habit. Through habit, men look on this glorious cre- 
ation with insensibility, and are less moved by the 
all-enlightening sun than by a show T of fire-works. It 
is the duty of a moral and religious teacher, almost to 
create a new sense in men, that they may learn in 
what a world of beauty and magnificence they live. 
And so in regard to Christ's character ; men become 
used to it, until they imagine, that there is something 
more admirable in a great man of their own day, a states- 
man or a conqueror, than in Him, the latchet of whose 
shoes statesmen and conquerors are not worthy to un- 
loose. 

In this discourse, I wish to show that the character 
of Christ, taken as a whole, is one which could not 
have entered the thoughts of man, could not have been 
imagined or feigned ; that it bears every mark of gen- 
uineness and truth : that it ought therefore to be ac- 
knowledged as real and of divine original. 

It is all-important, my friends, if we would feel the 
force of this argument, to transport ourselves to the 
times when Jesus lived. We are very apt to think, 
that he was moving about in such a city as this, or 
among a people agreeing with ourselves in modes of 
thinking and habits of life. But the truth is, he lived 
in a state of society singularly remote from our own. 
Of all nations, the Jewish was the most strongly mark- 
ed. The Jew hardly felt himself to belong to the 
human family. He was accustomed to speak of him- 
self as chosen by God, holy, clean ; whilst the Gentiles 
were sinners, dogs, polluted, unclean. His common 



92 



DISCOURSE II. 



dress, the phylactery on his brow or arm, the hem of 
his garment, his food, the ordinary circumstances of his 
life, as well as his temple, his sacrifices, his ablations, 
all held him up to himself, as a peculiar favorite of 
God, and all separated him from the rest of the world. 
With other nations he could not eat or marry. They 
were unworthy of his communion. Still, with all these 
notions of superiority, he saw himself conquered by 
those whom he despised. He was obliged to wear the 
shackles of Rome, to see Roman legions in his ter- 
ritory, a Roman guard near his temple, and a Ro- 
man tax-gatherer extorting, for the support of an idola- 
trous government and an idolatrous worship, what 
he regarded as due only to God. The hatred which 
burned in the breast of the Jew towards his foreign 
oppressor perhaps never glowed with equal intenseness 
in any other conquered state. He had, however, his 
secret consolation. The time was near, the prophetic 
age was at hand, when Judea was to break her chains 
and rise from the dust. Her long promised king and 
deliverer was near, and was coming to wear the crown 
of universal empire. From Jerusalem was to go forth 
his law, and all nations were to serve the chosen peo- 
ple of God. To this conqueror the Jews indeed as- 
cribed the office of promoting religion : but the re- 
ligion of Moses, corrupted into an outward service, 
was to them the perfection of human nature. They 
clung to its forms with the whole energy of their souls. 
To the Mosaic institution, they ascribed their distinction 
from all other nations. It lay at the foundation of their 
hopes of dominion. I believe no strength of preju- 
dice ever equalled the intense attachment of the 



DISCOURSE II. 



93 



Jew to his peculiar national religion. You may judge 
of its power by the fact of its having been transmitted 
through so many ages, amidst persecution and sufferings 
which would have subdued any spirit but that of a Jew. 
You must bring these things to your mind. You must 
place yourselves in the midst of this singular people. 

Among this singular people, burning with impatient 
expectation, appeared Jesus of Nazareth. His first 
words were " Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand.'' These words we hear with little emotion : but 
to the Jews, who had been watching for this kingdom 
for ages, and who were looking for its immediate mani- 
festation, they must have been awakening as an earth- 
quake. Accordingly we find Jesus thronged by multi- 
tudes which no building could contain. He repairs to 
a mountain, as affording him advantages for addressing 
the crowd. I see them surrounding him with eager 
looks, and ready to drink in every word from his lips. 
And what do I hear ? Not one word of Judea, of Rome, 
of freedom, of conquest, of the glories of God's chosen 
people, and of the thronging of all nations to the tem- 
ple on Mount Zion. Almost every word was a death- 
blow to the hopes and feelings, which glowed through 
the whole people, and were consecrated under the 
name of religion. He speaks of the long-expected 
Kingdom of Heaven ; but speaks of it as a felicity 
promised to, and only to be partaken by, the humble 
and pure in heart. The righteousness of the Pharisees, 
that which was deemed the perfection of religion, and 
which the new deliverer was expected to spread far and 
wide, he pronounces worthless, and declares the king- 
dom of Heaven, or of the Messiah, to be shut against 



94 



DISCOURSE II. 



all who do not cultivate a new, spiritual, and disinter- 
ested virtue. Instead of war and victory, be com- 
mands bis impatient bearers to love, to forgive, to bless 
their enemies ; and holds forth this spirit of benignity, 
mercy, peace, as the special badge of the people of 
the true Messiah. Instead of national interests and 
glories, he commands them to seek first a spirit of im- 
partial charity and love, unconfined by the bounds of 
tribe or nation, and proclaims this to be the happiness 
and honor of the reign for which they hoped. Instead 
of this world's riches which they expected to flow from 
all lands into their own, he commands them to lay up 
treasures in heaven, and directs, them to an incorrupt- 
ible, immortal life, as the true end of their being. Nor 
is this all. He does not merely offer himself as a 
spiritual deliverer, as the founder of a new empire of 
inward piety and universal charity ; he closes with 
language announcing a more mysterious office. " Many 
will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not 
prophesied in thy name? and in thy name done many 
wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, 
I never knew 7 you ; depart from me, ye that work 
iniquity. 5 ' Here I meet the annunciation of a charac- 
ter as august as it must have been startling. I hear 
him foretelling a dominion to be exercised in the future 
world. He begins to announce, what entered largely 
into his future teaching, that his power was not bound- 
ed to this earth. These words I better understand, 
when I hear him subsequently declaring, that, after a 
painful death, he was to rise again and ascend to 
heaven, and there, in a state of preeminent power and 
glory, was to be the advocate and judge of the human 
race. 



DISCOURSE II. 



95 



Such are some of the views, given by Jesus, of his 
character and reign, in the Sermon on the Mount. Im- 
mediately afterwards, I hear another lesson from him, 
bringing out some of these truths still more strongly. 
A Roman centurion makes application to him for the 
cure of a servant, whom he particularly valued ; and 
on expressing, in a strong manner, his conviction of the 
power of Jesus to heal at a distance, Jesus, according 
to the historian, " marvelled, and said to those that fol- 
lowed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great 
faith in Israel ; and I say unto you, that many shall 
come from the east and west, and shall sit down with 
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of 
heaven ; but the children of the kingdom " (that is, the 
Jews) " shall be cast out." Here all the hopes which 
the Jews had cherished of an exclusive or peculiar 
possession of the Messiah's kingdom, were crushed ; 
and the reception of the despised Gentile world to all 
his blessings, or in other words, the extension of his 
pure religion to the ends of the earth, began to be pro- 
claimed. 

Here I pause for the present, and I ask you, wheth- 
er the character of Jesus be not the most extraordinary 
in history, and wholly inexplicable on human prin- 
ciples. Review the ground over which we have gone. 
Recollect that he was born and grew up a Jew, in the 
midst of Jews, a people burning with one passion, and 
throwing their whole souls into the expectation of a 
national and earthly deliverer. He grew up among 
them in poverty, seclusion, and labors, fitted to 
contract his thoughts, purposes, and hopes ; and yet 
we find him escaping every influence of education 



96 



DISCOURSE II. 



and society. We find him as untouched by the feel- 
ings, which prevailed universally around him, which 
religion and patriotism concurred to consecrate, which 
the mother breathed into the ear of the child, and 
which the teacher of the synagogue strengthened in 
the adult, as if he had been brought up in another 
world. We find him conceiving a sublime purpose, 
such as had never dawned on sage or hero, and see 
him possessed with a consciousness of sustaining a rela- 
tion to God and mankind, and of being invested with 
powers in this world and the w T orld to come, such as 
had never entered the human mind. Whence now T , 
I ask, came the conception of this character ? 

Will any say it had its origin in imposture ; that it 
was a fabrication of a deceiver ? I answer, The char- 
acter claimed by Christ excludes this supposition, 
by its very nature. It was so remote from all the 
ideas and anticipations of the times, so unfit to 
aw T aken sympathy, so unattractive to the heathen, so 
exasperating to the Jew, that it was the last to enter 
the mind of an impostor. A deceiver of the dullest 
vision must have foreseen, that it would expose him 
to bitter scorn, abhorrence, and persecution, and that 
he would be left to carry on his work alone, just as 
Jesus always stood alone, and could find not an indi- 
vidual to enter into his spirit and design. What al- 
lurements an unprincipled, self-seeking man could find 
to such an enterprise, no common ingenuity can dis- 
cover. 

I affirm next, that the sublimity of the character 
claimed by Christ forbids us to trace it to imposture. 
That a selfish, designing, depraved mind, could have 



DISCOURSE II. 



97 



formed the idea and purpose of a work unparalleled 
in beneficence, in vastness, and in moral grandeur, 
would certainly be a strange departure from the laws 
of the human mind. I add, that if an impostor could 
have lighted on the conception of so sublime and won- 
derful a work as that claimed by Jesus, he could not, 
I say, he could not have thrown into his personation 
of it the air of truth and reality, The part would 
have been too high for him. He would have overact- 
ed it or fallen short of it perpetually. His true charac- 
ter would have rebelled against his assumed one. We 
should have seen something strained, forced, artificial, 
awkward, showing that he was not in his true sphere. 
To act up to a character so singular and grand, and 
one for which no precedent could be found, seems to me 
utterly impossible for a man, who had not the true 
spirit of it, or who was only wearing it as a mask. 

Now how stands the case with Jesus ? Bred a Jew- 
ish peasant or carpenter, he issues from obscurity, and 
claims for himself a divine office, a superhuman dig- 
nity, such as had not been imagined ; and in no in- 
stance does he fall below the character. The peas- 
ant, and still more the Jew, wholly disappears. We 
feel that a new being, of a new order of mind, is 
taking a part in human affairs. There is a native tone 
of grandeur and authority in his teaching. He speaks 
as a being related to the whole human race. His 
mind never shrinks within the ordinary limits of hu- 
man agency. A narrower sphere than the world never 
enters his thoughts. He speaks in a natural, spontane- 
ous style, of accomplishing the most arduous and im- 
portant change in human affairs. This unlabored 

9 



98 



DISCOURSE II. 



manner of expressing great thoughts is particularly- 
worthy of attention. You never hear from Jesus that 
swelling, pompous, ostentatious language, which al- 
most necessarily springs from an attempt to sustain a 
character above our powers. He talks of his glories as 
one to whom they were familiar, and of his intimacy 
and oneness with God, as simply as a child speaks of 
his connexion with his parents. He speaks of saving 
and judging the world, of drawing all men to himself, 
and of giving everlasting life, as we speak of the or- 
dinary powers which we exert. He makes no set 
harangues about the grandeur of his office and charac- 
ter. His consciousness of it gives a hue to his whole 
language, breaks out in indirect, undesigned expressions, 
showing that it was the deepest and most familiar of 
his convictions. This argument is only to be under- 
stood by reading the Gospels with a wakeful mind 
and heart. It does not lie on their surface, and it is the 
stronger for lying beneath it. When I read these 
books with care, when I trace the unaffected majesty 
which runs through the life of Jesus, and see him never 
falling below his sublime claims amidst poverty, and 
scorn, and in his last agony ; I have a feeling of 
the reality of his character which I cannot express. 
I feel that the Jewish carpenter could no more have 
conceived and sustained this character under motives of 
imposture, than an infant's arm could repeat the deeds 
of Hercules, or his unawakened intellect comprehend 
and rival the matchless works of genius. 

Am I told that the claims of Jesus had their origin, 
not in imposture but in enthusiasm ; that the imagina- 
tion, kindled by strong feeling, overpowered the judg- 



DISCOURSE II. 



99 



ment so far as to give him the notion of being destin- 
ed to some strange and unparalleled work ? I know 
that enthusiasm, or a kindled imagination, has great 
power ; and we are never to lose sight of it, in judging 
of the claims of religious teachers. But I say first, 
that, except in cases where it amounts to insanity, 
enthusiasm works, in a greater or less degree, accord- 
ing to a man's previous conceptions and modes of 
thought. In Judea, where the minds of men were 
burning with feverish expectation of a Messiah, I can 
easily conceive of a Jew imagining that in himself this 
ardent conception, this ideal of glory, was to be real- 
ized. I can conceive of his seating himself in fancy 
on the throne of David, and secretly pondering the 
means of his appointed triumphs. But that a Jew 
should fancy himself the Messiah, and at the same 
time should strip that character of all the attributes 
which had fired his youthful imagination and heart, — 
that he should start aside from all the feelings and 
hopes of his age, and should acquire a conscious- 
ness of being destined to a wholly new career, and 
one as unbounded as it was new, this is exceedingly 
improbable ; and one thing is certain, that an imagina- 
tion so erratic, so ungoverned, and able to generate 
the conviction of being destined to a work so immeas- 
urably disproportioned to the power of the individual, 
must have partaken of insanity. Now 7 is it conceiva- 
ble, that an individual, mastered by so wild and fervid 
an imagination, should have sustained the dignity 
claimed by Christ, should have acted worthily the 
highest part ever assumed on earth ? Would not his 
enthusiasm have broken out amidst the peculiar ex- 



100 



DISCOURSE II. 



citements of the life of Jesus, and have left a touch 
of madness on his teaching and conduct ? Is it to such 
a man that we should look for the inculcation of a new 
and perfect form of virtue, and for the exemplification 
of humanity in its fairest form ? 

The charge of an extravagant, self-deluding enthu- 
siasm is the last to be fastened on Jesus. Where can 
we find the traces of it in his history ? Do we detect 
them in the calm authority of his precepts ; in the 
mild, practical, and beneficent spirit of his religion; 
in the unlabored simplicity of the language with which 
he unfolds his high powers, and the sublime truths of 
religion ; or in the good sense, the knowledge of hu- 
man nature, which he always discovers in his estimate 
and treatment of the different classes of men with 
whom he acted ? Do we discover this enthusiasm in 
the singular fact, that whilst he claimed power in the 
future world, and always turned men's minds to Heav- 
en, he never indulged his own imagination, or stimulat- 
ed that of his disciples, by giving vivid pictures, or 
any minute description, of that unseen state ? The 
truth is, that, remarkable as was the character of 
Jesus, it was distinguished by nothing more than by 
calmness and self-possession. This trait pervades his 
other excellences. How calm was his piety ! Point 
me, if you can, to one vehement, passionate expression 
of his religious feelings. Does the Lord's Prayer 
breathe a feverish enthusiasm? The habitual style 
of Jesus on the subject of religion, if introduced into 
many churches of his followers at the present day, 
would be charged with coldness. The calm and the 
rational character of his piety is particularly seen in 



DISCOURSE II. 



101 



the doctrine which he so earnestly inculcates, that dis- 
interested love and self-denying service to our fellow 
creatures are the most acceptable worship we can offer 
to our Creator. His benevolence too, though singular- 
ly earnest and deep, was composed and serene. He 
never lost the possession of himself in his sympathy with 
others ; was never hurried into the impatient and rash 
enterprises of an enthusiastic philanthropy ; but did 
good with the tranquillity and constancy which mark 
the providence of God. The depth of bis calmness may 
best be understood by considering the opposition made 
to his claims. His labors were every where insidi- 
ously watched and industriously thwarted by vindic- 
tive foes, who had even conspired to compass, through 
his death, the ruin of his cause. Now a feverish en- 
thusiasm, which fancies itself to be entrusted with a 
great work of God, is singularly liable to impatient 
indignation under furious and malignant opposition. 
Obstacles increase its vehemence ; it becomes more 
eager and hurried in the accomplishment of its pur- 
poses, in proportion as they are withstood. Be it 
therefore remembered, that the malignity of Christ's 
foes, though never surpassed, and for the time tri- 
umphant, never robbed him of self-possession, roused 
no passion, and threw no vehemence or precepitation 
into his exertions. He did not disguise from himself 
or his followers the impression made on the multitude 
by his adversaries. He distinctly foresaw the violent 
death towards which he was fast approaching. Yet, 
confiding in God, and in the silent progress of his 
truth, he possessed his soul in peace. Not only was he 
calm, but his calmness rises into sublimity when we 
9* 



102 



DISCOURSE II. 



consider the storms which raged around him, and the 
vastness of the prospects in which his spirit found re- 
pose. I say, then, that serenity and self-possession 
were peculiarly the attributes of Jesus. I affirm, 
that the singular and sublime character claimed by 
Jesus, can be traced neither to imposture, nor to an un- 
governed, insane imagination. It can only be account- 
ed for by its truth, its reality. 

I began with observing how our long familiarity with 
Jesus blunts our minds to his singular excellence. We 
probably have often read of the character which he 
claimed, without a thought of its extraordinary nature. 
But I know nothing so sublime. The plans and labors 
of statesmen sinkf into the sports of children, w T hen 
compared with the work which Jesus announced, and 
to which he devoted himself in life and death, with a 
thorough consciousness of its reality. The idea of 
changing the moral aspect of the whole earth, of recov- 
ering all nations to the pure and inward worship of 
one God, and to a spirit of divine and fraternal love, 
was one of which we meet not a trace in philosopher 
or legislator before him. The human mind had given 
no promise of this extent of view. The conception of 
this enterprise, and the calm, unshaken expectation of 
success, in one who had no station and no wealth, 
who cast from him the sword with abhorrence, and 
who forbade his disciples to use any weapons but those 
of love, discover a wonderful trust in the power of God 
and the power of love ; and when to this we add, 
that Jesus looked not only to the triumph of his pure 
faith in the present world, but to a mighty and benefi- 
cent power in Heaven, we witness a vastness of pur- 



DISCOURSE II. 103 

pose, a grandeur of thought and feeling, so original, 
so superior to the workings of all other minds, that 
nothing but our familiarity can prevent our contempla- 
tion of it with wonder and profound awe. I confess, 
when I can escape the deadening power of habit, 
and can receive the full import of such passages as the 
following, — "Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," — " I am 
come to seek and to save that which was lost," — " He 
that confesseth me before men, him will I confess 
before my Father in Heaven," — " Whosoever shall be 
ashamed of me before men, of him shall the Son of Man 
be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of the Father 
with the holy angels," — " In my Father's house are 
many mansions ; I go to prepare a place for you : " — I 
say, when I can succeed in realizing the import of such 
passages, I feel myself listening to a being, such as 
never before and never since spoke in human language. 
I am awed by the consciousness of greatness which 
these simple words express ; and when I connect this 
greatness with the proofs of Christ's miracles which 
I gave you in a former discourse, I am compelled to 
exclaim with the centurion, " Truly, this was the Son 
of God." 

I have thus, my friends, set before you one view of 
Jesus Christ, which shows him to have been the most 
extraordinary being who ever lived. I invite your 
attention to another ; and I am not sure, but that it is 
still more striking. You have seen the consciousness 
of greatness which Jesus possessed ; I now ask you to 
consider, how, with this consciousness, he lived among 



104 



DISCOURSE IL 



men. To convey my meaning more distinctly, let me 
avail myself of an imaginary case. Suppose you had 
never heard the particulars of Christ's history, but were 
told in general, that, ages ago, an extraordinary man 
appeared in the world, whose mind was w T holly pos- 
sessed with the idea of having come from God, w 7 ho 
regarded himself as clothed with divine power and 
charged with the sublimest work in the universe, who 
had the consciousness of sustaining a relation of unex- 
ampled authority and beneficence, not to one nation or 
age, but to all nations and all times, — and who antici- 
pated a spiritual kingdom and everlasting powder be- 
yond the grave. Suppose you should be told, that, on 
entering the world, he found not one mind able to com- 
prehend his views, and felt himself immeasurably 
exalted in thought and purpose above all around him, 
and suppose you should then be asked what appear- 
ance, what mode of life, what tone, what air, what 
deportment, what intercourse with the multitude 
seemed to you to suit such a character, and were 
probably adopted by him ; how would you repre- 
sent him to your minds? Would you not suppose, 
that, with this peculiar character, he adopted some 
peculiar mode of life, expressive of his superiority 
to and separation from all other men? Would you 
not expect something distinctive in his appearance ? 
Would you not expect him to assume some badge, and 
to exact some homage ? Would you not expect, that, 
with a mind revolving such vast thoughts and raised 
above the earth, he would look coldly on the ordinary 
gratifications of men ? that, with a mind spreading 
itself over the world, and meditating its subjection to 



DISCOURSE II. 



105 



his truth, he would take little interest in ordinary indi- 
viduals ? and that, possessing, in his own doctrine and 
character, a standard of sublime virtue, he would attach 
little importance to the low attainments of the ignorant 
and superstitious around him? Would you not make 
him a public character, and expect to see him laboring 
to establish his ascendency among public men ? Would 
you not expect to see his natural affections absorbed in 
his universal philanthropy ; and would not private at- 
tachments seem to you quite inconsistent with his vast 
superiority, and the immensity of his purposes ? Would 
you not expect him to avail himself of the best accom- 
modations the world could afford ? Would you not ex- 
pect the great Teacher to select the most sacred spots 
for his teaching, and the Lord of all to erect some con- 
spicuous seat, from which should go forth the laws 
which were to reach the ends of the earth ? Would you 
not, in a word, expect this extraordinary personage 
to surround himself with extraordinary circumstances, 
and to maintain a separation from the degraded multi- 
tude around him ? 

Such, I believe, would be the expectation of us all ; 
and what was the case with Jesus ? Read his history. 
He comes with the consciousness of more than human 
greatness, to accomplish an infinite work ; and where 
do you find him ? What is his look ? what his man- 
ner? How does he converse, how live with men? 
His appearance, mode of life, and intercourse are di- 
rectly the reverse of what we should have supposed. 
He comes in the ordinary dress of the class of society 
in which he had grown up. He retreats to no soli- 
tude ; like John, to strike awe, nor seeks any spot which 



106 DISCOURSE II. 

had been consecrated in Jewish history. Would you 
find him ? Go to the house of Peter, the fisherman. 
Go to the well of Samaria, where he rests after the 
fatigues of his journey. Would you hear him teach ? 
You may find him, indeed, sometimes in the temple, for 
that was a place of general resort ; but commonly you 
may find him instructing in the open air, now from a boat 
on the Galilean lake, now on a mount, and now in the 
streets of the crowded city. He has no place wherein 
to lay his head, nor will he have one. A rich ruler 
comes and falls at his feet. He says, " Go, sell what 
thou hast, and give to the poor, and then come and 
follow me." Nor was this all. Something more striking 
remains to be told. He did not merely live in the 
streets, and in the houses of fishermen. In these 
places, had he pleased, he might have cleared a space 
around him, and raised a barrier between himself and 
others. But in these places, and every where, he 
lived with men as a man, a brother, a friend, some- 
times a servant ; and entered, with a deep, unexam- 
pled sympathy, into the feelings, interests, wants, sor- 
rows of individuals, of ordinary men, and even of 
the most depressed, despised, and forsaken of the 
race. Here is the most striking view of Jesus. 
This combination of the spirit of humanity, in its low- 
liest, tenderest form, with the consciousness of unri- 
valled and divine glories, is the most wonderful distinc- 
tion of this wonderful character. Here we learn the 
chief reason, why he chose poverty, and refused every 
peculiarity of manner and appearance. He did this 
because he desired to come near to the multitude of 
men, to make himself accessible to all, to pour out the 



DISCOURSE II. 



107 



fullness of his sympathy upon all, to know and weep 
over their sorrows and sins, and to manifest his interest 
in their affections and joys. 

I can offer but a few instances of this sympathy of 
Christ with human nature in all its varieties of charac- 
ter and condition. But how beautiful are they ! At the 
very opening of his ministry, we find him present at a 
marriage, to which he and his disciples had been call- 
ed. Among the Jews this was an occasion of peculiar 
exhilaration and festivity ; but Jesus did not therefore 
decline it. He knew what affections, joys, sorrows, and 
moral influences are bound up in this institution, and 
he went to the celebration, not as an ascetic, to frown 
on its bright hopes and warm congratulations, but to 
sanction it by his presence, and to heighten its enjoy- 
ments. How little does this comport with the solitary 
dignity, which we should have pronounced most ac- 
cordant with his character ; and what a spirit of human- 
ity does it breathe ! But this event stands almost alone 
in his history. His chief sympathy was not with them 
that rejoice, but with the ignorant, sinful, sorrowful; 
and with these we find him cultivating an habitual inti- 
macy. Though so exalted in thought and purpose, he 
chose uneducated men to be his chief disciples ; and he 
lived with them, not as a superior, giving occasional 
and formal instruction, but became their companion, 
travelled with them on foot, slept in their dwellings, 
sat at their tables, partook their plain fare, communi- 
cated to them his truth in the simplest form ; and though 
they constantly misunderstood him, and never receiv- 
ed his full meaning, he was never wearied with teach- 
ing them. So familiar was his intercourse, that we find 



108 



DISCOURSE II. 



Peter reproving him with an affectionate zeal, for an- 
nouncing his approaching death, and we find John lean- 
ing on his bosom. Of his last discourse to these dis- 
ciples I need not speak. It stands alone among all 
writings for the union of tenderness and majesty. His 
own sorrows are forgotten in his solicitude to speak 
peace and comfort to his humble followers. 

The depth of his human sympathies was beautifully 
manifested when children were brought to him. His 
disciples, judging as all men would judge, thought that 
he who was sent to wear the crown of universal empire, 
had too great a work before him to give his time and 
attention to children, and reproved the parents who 
brought them ; but Jesus, rebuking his disciples, call- 
ed to him the children. Never, I believe, did child- 
hood awaken such deep love as at that moment. He 
took them in his arms and blessed them, and not only 
said that "of such was the kingdom of heaven," but 
added, " He that receiveth a little child in my name, 
receiveth me ; " so entirely did he identify himself with 
this primitive, innocent, beautiful form of human nature. 

There was no class of human beings so low as to be 
beneath his sympathy. He not merely taught the 
publican and sinner, but, with all his consciousness of 
purity, sat down and dined with them, and, when re- 
proved by the malignant Pharisee for such compan- 
ionship, answered by the touching parables of the Lost 
Sheep and the Prodigal Son, and said, " I am come to 
seek and to save that which was lost." 

No personal suffering dried up this fountain of love 
in his breast. On his way to the cross, he heard 
some women of Jerusalem bewailing him, and at the 



DISCOURSE II. 



109 



sounds forgetting his own grief, he turned to them and 
said, " Women of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep 
for yourselves and your children." — On the cross, 
whilst his mind was divided between intense suffering, 
and the contemplation of the infinite blessings in 
which his sufferings were to issue, his eye lighted on 
his mother and John, and the sensibilities of a son and 
a friend mingled with the sublime consciousness of 
the universal Lord and Saviour. Never before did 
natural affection find so tender and beautiful an utter- 
ance. To his mother he said, directing her to John, 
"Behold thy son; I leave my beloved disciple to take 
my place, to perform my filial offices, and to enjoy a 
share of that affection with w T hich you have followed 
me through life ; " and to John he said, " Behold thy 
mother i I bequeath to you the happiness of minis- 
tering to my dearest earthly friend." Nor is this all. 
The spirit of humanity had one higher triumph. 
Whilst his enemies surrounded him with a ma- 
lignity unsoftened by his last agonies, and, to give 
the keenest edge to insult, reminded him scofiingly of 
the high character and office w^hich he had claimed, 
his only notice of them was the prayer, " Father, 
forgive them, they know not what they do." 

Thus Jesus lived with men ; with the consciousness 
of unutterable majesty, he joined a lowliness, gentle- 
ness, humanity, and sympathy, w r hich have no exam- 
ple in human history. I ask you to contemplate this 
wonderful union. In proportion to the superiority of 
Jesus to all around him was the intimacy, the 
brotherly love, with which he bound himself to them. 
I maintain, that this is a character wholly remote from 

10 



110 



DISCOURSE II. 



human conception. To imagine it to be the produc- 
tion of imposture or enthusiasm, shows a strange un- 
soundness of mind. I contemplate it with a venera- 
tion second only to the profound awe with which I 
look up to God. It bears no mark of human inven- 
tion. It was real. It belonged to and it manifested 
the beloved Son of God. 

But I have not done. May I ask your attention 
a few moments more ? We have not yet reached the 
depth of Christ's character. We have not touched 
the great principle, on which his wonderful sympathy 
was founded, and which endeared to him his office of 
universal Saviour. Do you ask what this deep prin- 
ciple was ? I answer, It was his conviction of the 
greatness of the human soul. He saw in man the im- 
press and image of the divinity, and therefore thirsted 
for his redemption, and took the tenderest interest in 
him, whatever might be the rank, character, or con- 
dition in which he was found. This spiritual view of 
man pervades and distinguishes the teaching of Christ. 
Jesus looked on men with an eye which pierced be- 
neath the material frame. The body vanished before 
him. The trappings of the rich, the rags of the poor, 
were nothing to him. He looked through them, as 
though they did not exist, to the soul ; and there, 
amidst clouds of ignorance and plague-spots of sin, he 
recognised a spiritual and immortal nature, and the 
germs of power and perfection which might be un- 
folded for ever. In the most fallen and depraved man, 
he saw a being who might become an angel of light. 
Still more, he felt that there was nothing in himself 



DISCOURSE II. 



Ill 



to which men might not ascend. His own lofty con- 
sciousness did not sever him from the multitude ; for 
he saw in his own greatness the model of what men 
might become. So deeply was he thus impressed, 
that again and again, in speaking of his future glories, 
he announced, that in these his true followers were 
to share. They were to sit on his throne, and par- 
take of his beneficent power. 

Here I pause, and indeed I know not what can be 
added to heighten the wonder, reverence, and love, 
which are due to Jesus. When I consider him, not 
only as possessed with the consciousness of an unex- 
ampled aud unbounded majesty, but as recognising a 
kindred nature in all human beings, and living and 
dying to raise them to a participation of his divine 
glories ; and when I see him under these views allying 
himself to men by the tenderest ties, embracing them 
with a spirit of humanity, which no insult, injury, or 
pain could for a moment repel or overpower, I am 
filled with wonder as well as reverence and love. I 
feel that this character is not of human invention, 
that it was not assumed through fraud, or struck out 
by enthusiasm : for it is infinitely above their reach. 
When I add this character of Jesus to the other evi- 
dences of his religion, it gives to what before seemed 
so strong, a new and a vast accession of strength : 
I feel as if I could not be deceived. The Gospels 
must be true ; they were drawn from a living origi- 
nal ; they were founded on reality. The character of 
Jesus is not a fiction ; he was what he claimed to be, and 
what his followers attested. Nor is this all. Jesus not 
only was, he is still, the Son of God, the Saviour of 



112 



DISCOURSE II. 



the world. He exists now; he has entered that Heav- 
en, to which he alwa) r s looked forward on earth. 
There he lives and reigns. With a clear, calm faith, 
I see him in that state of glory ; and I confidently 
expect, at no distant period, to see him face to face. 
We have indeed no absent friend whom we shall so 
surely meet. Let us then, my hearers, by imitation 
of his virtues and obedience to his w T ord, prepare our- 
selves to join him in those pure mansions, where he 
is surrounding himself with the good and pure of our 
race, and will communicate to them for ever his own 
spirit, power, and joy. 



DISCOURSE III. 



ROMANS i. 16. 

I AM NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST. 

Such was the language of Paul ; and every man 
will respond to it, who comprehends the character and 
has felt the influence of Christianity. In a former 
discourse, I proposed to state to you some reasons for 
adopting as our own the words of the Apostle, for 
joining in this open and resolute testimony to the 
gospel of Christ. I observed, that I was not asiiam- 
ed of the gospel, first because it is True, and to this 
topic the discourse was devoted. I wish now to con- 
tinue the subject and to state another ground of undis- 
guised and unshaken adherence to Christianity. I 
say, then, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ 
because it is a rational religion. It agrees with Rea- 
son ; therefore I count it worthy of acceptation, there- 
fore I do not blush to enroll myself among its friends 
and advocates. The object of the present discourse 
will be the illustration of this claim of Christianity. 
I wish to show you the harmony which subsists be- 
tween the light of God ? s word, and that primitive light 

10* 



114 



DISCOURSE III. 



of reason, which he has kindled within us to be our 
perpetual guide. If, in treating this subject, I shall 
come into conflict with any class of Christians, I trust 
I shall not be considered as imputing to them any- 
moral or intellectual defect. I judge men by their 
motives, dispositions, and lives, and not by their specu- 
lations or peculiar opinions ; and I esteem piety and 
virtue equally venerable, whether found in friend or 
foe. 

Christianity is a Rational religion. Were it not so, 
I should be ashamed to profess it. I am aware that 
it is the fashion with some to decry reason, and to set 
up revelation as an opposite authority. This error 
though countenanced by good men, and honestly main- 
tained for the defence of the Christian cause, ought 
to be earnestly withstood ; for it virtually surrenders 
our religion into the hands of the unbeliever. It 
saps the foundation to strengthen the building. It 
places our religion in hostility to human nature, and 
gives to its adversaries the credit of vindicating the 
rights and noblest powers of the mind. 

We must never forget that our rational nature is the 
greatest gift of God. For this we owe him our chief 
gratitude. It is a greater gift than any outward aid or 
benefaction, and no doctrine which degrades it can 
come from its Author. The developement of it is the 
end of our being. Revelation is but a means, and is 
designed to concur with nature, providence, and God's 
spirit in carrying forward reason to its perfection. I 
glory in Christianity because it enlarges, invigorates, 
exalts my rational nature. If I could not be a Chris- 
tian without ceasing to be rational, I should not hesi- 



DISCOURSE III. 



115 



tate as to my choice. I feel myself bound to sacrifice 
to Christianity property, reputation, life ; but I ought 
not to sacrifice to any religion, that reason which lifts 
me above the brute and constitutes me a man. I can 
conceive no sacrilege greater than to prostrate or re- 
nounce the highest faculty which we have derived 
from God. In so doing w T e should offer violence to 
the divinity within us. Christianity wages no war 
with reason, but is one with it, and is given to be its 
helper and friend. 

I wish, in the present discourse, to illustrate and 
confirm the views now given. My remarks will be 
arranged under two heads. I propose, first, to show 
that Christianity is founded on, and supposes the 
authority of reason, and cannot therefore oppose it 
without subverting itself. My object in this part of 
the discourse will be to expose the error of those who 
hope to serve revelation by disparaging reason. I 
shall then, in the second place, compare Christianity 
and the light of reason, to show their accordance ; and 
shall prove, by descending to particulars, that Chris- 
tianity is eminently a rational religion. My aim, under 
this head, will be to vindicate the gospel from the 
reproaches of the unbeliever, and to strengthen the 
faith and attachment of its friends. — Before I begin, 
let me observe that this discussion, from the nature 
of the subject, must assume occasionally an abstract 
form and will demand serious attention. I am to 
speak of Reason, the chief faculty of the mind ; and no 
simplicity of language in treating such a topic can ex- 
empt the hearer from the necessity of a patient effort 
of thought. 



116 



DISCOURSE III. 



I am to begin with showing that the Christian rev- 
elation is founded on the authority of reason, and conse- 
quently cannot oppose it ; and here it may be proper 
to settle the meaning of the word Reason. One of 
the most important steps towards the truth is to de- 
termine the import of terms. Very often fierce con- 
troversies have sprung from obscurity of language, 
and the parties, on explaining themselves, have dis- 
covered that they have been spending their strength 
in a war of words. What then is reason ? 

The term Reason is used with so much latitude, 
that to fix its precise limits is not an easy task. In 
this respect it agrees with the other words which 
express the intellectual faculties. One idea, however, 
is always attached to it. All men understand by rea- 
son the highest faculty or energy of the mind. With- 
out laboring for a philosophical definition that will 
comprehend all its exercises, I shall satisfy myself 
with pointing out two of its principal characteristics or 
functions. 

First, it belongs to reason to comprehend Universal 
truths, This is among its most important offices. There 
are particular and there are universal truths. The last 
are the noblest, and the capacity of perceiving them is 
the distinction of intelligent beings ; and these belong to 
reason. Let me give my meaning by some illustrations. 
I see a stone falling to the ground. This is a particu- 
lar truth ; but I do not stop here. I believe that not 
only this particular stone falls towards the earth, but 
that every particle of matter, in whatever world, tends, 
or, as is sometimes said, is attracted towards all other 
matter. Here is a universal truth, a principle extend- 



DISCOURSE III. 



117 



ing to the whole material creation, and essential to its 
existence. This truth belongs to reason. — Again, I 
see a man producing some effect, a manufacture, a 
house. Here is a particular truth, But I am not only 
capable of seeing particular causes and effects ; I am 
sure that every thing which begins to exist, no matter 
when or where, must have a cause, that no change 
ever has taken place or ever will take place without 
a cause. Here is a universal truth, something true 
here and every where, true now and through eterni- 
ty ; and this truth belongs to reason. — Again, I see 
with my eyes, I traverse with my hands, a limited 
space ; but this is not all. I am sure, that, beyond 
the limits which my limbs or senses reach, there is an 
unbounded space ; that, go where I will, an infinity will 
spread around me. Here is another universal truths 
and this belongs to reason. The idea of Infinity is in- 
deed one of the noblest conceptions of this faculty. — - 
Again, I see a man conferring a good on another, 
Here is a particular truth or perception. But my mind 
is not confined to this. I see and feel that it is right for 
all intelligent beings, exist when or where they may, to 
do good, and wrong for them to seek the misery of oth- 
ers. Here is a universal truth, a law extending from 
God to the lowest human being : and this belongs to 
reason. I trust I have conveyed to you my views in 
regard to the first characteristic of this highest power of 
the soul. Its office is to discern universal truths, great 
and eternal principles. But it does not stop here. 
Reason is also exercised in applying these universal 
truths to particular cases, beings, events. For ex- 
ample, reason teaches me, as we have seen, that all 



118 



DISCOURSE III. 



changes without exception require a cause ; and in con- 
formity to this principle, it prompts me to seek the 
particular causes of the endless changes and appear- 
ances which fall under my observation. Thus reason 
is perpetually at work on the ideas furnished us by the 
senses, by consciousness, by memory, associating them 
with its own great truths, or investing them with its 
own universality. 

I now proceed to the second function of reason, 
which is indeed akin to the first. Reason is the power 
which tends, and is perpetually striving, to reduce our 
various thoughts to Unity or Consistency. Perhaps the 
most fundamental conviction of reason is, that all truths 
agree together ; that inconsistency is the mark of error. 
Its intensest, most earnest effort is to bring concord into 
the intellect, to reconcile what seem to be clashing 
views. On the observation of a new fact, reason 
strives to incorporate it with former knowledge. It can 
allow nothing to stand separate in the mind. It labors 
to bring together scattered truths, and to give them the 
strength and beauty of a vital order. Its end and delight 
is harmony. It is shocked by an inconsistency in belief, 
just as a fine ear is wounded by a discord. It carries 
within itself an instinctive consciousness, that all things 
which exist are intimately bound together ; and it can- 
not rest until it has connected whatever we witness 
with the infinite whole. Reason, according to this 
view, is the most glorious form or exercise of the intel- 
lectual nature. It corresponds to the unity of God 
and the universe, and seeks to make the soul the image 
and mirror of this sublime unity. 



DISCOURSE III. 



119 



I have thus given my views of reason ; but, to pre- 
vent all perversion, before I proceed to the main dis- 
cussion, let me offer a word or two more of explanation. 
In this discourse, when I speak of the accordance of 
revelation w T ith reason, I suppose this faculty to be 
used deliberately, conscientiously, and with the love of 
truth. Men often baptize with the name of reason their 
prejudices, unexamined notions, or opinions adopted 
through interest, pride, or other unworthy biasses. It 
is not uncommon to hear those who sacrifice the plain- 
est dictates of the rational nature to impulse and pas- 
sion, setting themselves up as oracles of reason. Now 
when I say revelation must accord with reason, I do 
not mean by the term the corrupt and superficial opin- 
ions of men who have betrayed and debased their 
rational pow T ers. I mean reason, calmly, honestly ex- 
ercised for the acquisition of truth and the invigoration 
of virtue. 

After these explanations I proceed to the discussion 
of the tw 7 o leading principles to which this Discourse is 
devoted. 

First, I am to show r that revelation is founded on the 
authority of reason, and cannot therefore oppose or 
disparage it without subverting itself. Let me state a 
few of the considerations which convince me of the truth 
of this position. The first is, that reason alone makes 
us capable of receiving a revelation. It must previ- 
ously exist and operate, or we should be w 7 holly unpre- 
pared for the communications of Christ. Revelation 
then is built on reason. You will see the truth of 
these remarks if you will consider to whom revelation 



120 



DISCOURSE III. 



is sent. Why is it given to men rather than to brutes ? 
Why have not God's messengers gone to the fields to 
proclaim his glad tidings to bird and beast ? The an- 
swer is obvious. These want reason ; and> wanting this, 
they have no capacity or preparation for revealed truth. 
And not only w T ould revelation be lost on the brute ; 
let it speak to the child, before his rational faculties 
have been awakened, and before some ideas of duty 
and his own nature have been developed, and it might 
as well speak to a stone. Reason is the preparation 
and ground of revelation. 

This truth will be still more obvious, if we consider, 
not only to whom, but in what way ? the Christian rev- 
elation is communicated. How is it conveyed ? In 
words. Did it make these words ? No. They were 
in use ages before its birth. Again I ask, Did it make 
the ideas or thoughts which these words express ? No. 
If the hearers of Jesus had not previously attached 
ideas to the terms which he employed, they could not 
have received his meaning. He might as well have 
spoken to them in a foreign tongue. Thus the ideas 
which enter into Christianity subsisted before. They 
were ideas of reason ; so that to this faculty revelation 
owes the materials of which it is composed. 

Revelation we must remember is not our earliest 
teacher. Man is not born with the single power of 
reading God's word, and sent immediately to that 
guide. His eyes open first on another volume, that 
of the creation. Long before he can read the Bible, 
he looks round on the earth and sky. He reads the 
countenances of his friends, and hears and understands 
their voices. He looks, too, by degrees within himself 



DISCOURSE 111. 



121 



and acquires some ideas of his own soul. Thus his 
first school is that of nature and reason, and this is 
necessary to prepare him for a communication from 
Heaven. Revelation does not find the mind a blank, 
a void, prepared to receive unresistingly whatever may 
be offered ; but finds it in possession of various knowl- 
edge from nature and experience, and, still more, in 
possession of great principles, fundamental truths, 
moral ideas, which are derived from itself, and which are 
the germs of all its future improvement. This last 
view is peculiarly important. The mind does not re- 
ceive every thing from abroad. Its great ideas arise 
from itself, and by those native lights it reads and com- 
prehends the volumes of nature and revelation. We 
speak, indeed, of nature and revelation as making 
known to us an intelligent first cause ; but the ideas of 
intelligence and causation we derive originally from our 
own nature. The elements of the idea of God we gather 
from ourselves. Pow ? er, wisdom, love, virtue, beauty, 
and happiness, words which contain all that is glorious 
in the universe and interesting in our existence, express 
attributes of the mind, and are understood by us only 
through consciousness. It is true, these ideas or prin- 
ciples of reason are often obscured by thick clouds, 
and mingled with many and deplorable errors. Still 
they are never lost. Christianity recognises them, is 
built on them, and needs them as its interpreters. If 
an illustration of these views be required, I would point 
you to what may be called the most fundamental idea 
of religion. I mean the idea of right, of duty. Do we 
derive this originally and wholly from sacred books ? 
Has not every human being, whether born within or 

11 



122 



DISCOURSE III. 



beyond the bounds of revelation, a sense of the distinc- 
tion between right and wrong ? Is there not an earlier 
voice than revelation, approving or rebuking men ac- 
cording to their deeds ? In barbarous ages is not con- 
science heard ? And does it not grow more articulate 
with the progress of society ? Christianity does not 
create, but presupposes the idea of duty; and the same 
may be said of other great convictions. Revelation 
then does not stand alone, nor is it addressed to a blank 
and passive mind. It was meant to be a joint worker 
with other teachers, with nature, with Providence, with 
conscience, with our rational powers ; and as these all 
are given us by God, they cannot differ from each 
other. God must agree with himself. He has but one 
voice. It is man who speaks with jarring tongues. 
Nothing but harmony can come from the Creator; and 
accordingly a religion claiming to be from God can 
give no surer proof of falsehood, than by contradicting 
those previous truths which God is teaching by our 
very nature. We have thus seen that reason prepares 
us for a divine communication, and that it furnishes the 
ideas or materials of which revelation consists. This 
is my first consideration. 

I proceed to a second. I affirm, then, that revelation 
rests on the authority of reason, because to this faculty 
it submits the evidences of its truth, and nothing but 
the approving sentence of reason binds us to receive 
and obey it. This is a very weighty consideration. 
Christianity, in placing itself before the tribunal of rea- 
son and in resting its claims on the sanction of this fac- 
ulty, is one of the chief witnesses to the authority and 
dignity of our rational nature. That I have ascribed to 



DISCOURSE III. 



123 



this faculty its true and proper office, may be easily 
made to appear. I take the New Testament in hand, 
and on what ground do I receive its truths as divine ? 
I see nothing on its pages but the same letters in which 
other books are written. No miraculous voice from 
Heaven assures me that it is God's word, nor does any 
mysterious voice within my soul command me to be- 
lieve the supernatural works of Christ. How then 
shall I settle the question of the origin of this religion ? 
I must examine it by the same rational faculties by 
which other subjects are tried. I must ask what are 
its evidences, and I must lay them before reason, the 
only power by which evidence can be weighed. I have 
not a distinct faculty given me for judging a revelation. 
I have not two understandings, one for inquiring into 
God's w T ord and another into his works. As with the 
same bodily eye I now look on the earth, now on the 
heavens, so with the same power of reason I examine 
now nature, now revelation. Reason must collect and 
weigh the various proofs of Christianity. It must es- 
pecially compare this system with those great moral 
convictions, which are written by the finger of God on 
the heart, and which make man a law to himself. A 
religion subverting these, it must not hesitate to reject, be 
its evidences what they may. A religion, for example, 
commanding us to hate and injure society, reason must 
instantly discard, without even waiting to examine its 
proofs. From these views we learn, not only that it is 
the province of reason to judge of the truth of Chris- 
tianity, but, what is still more important, that the rules 
or tests by which it judges are of its own dictation. 
The laws which it applies in this case have their origin 



124 



DISCOURSE III. 



in itself. No one will pretend, that revelation can pre- 
scribe the principles by which the question of its own 
truth should be settled ; for, until proved to be true, it 
has no authority. Reason must prescribe the tests or 
standards, to which a professed communication from 
God should be referred ; and among these none are 
more important than that moral law, which belongs to 
the very essence, and is the deepest conviction, of the 
rational nature. Revelation then rests on reason, and, 
in opposing it, would act for its own destruction. 

I have given two views. I have shown that revela- 
tion draw T s its ideas or materials from reason, and that 
it appeals to this power as the judge of its truth. I now 
assert, thirdly, that it rests on the authority of reason, 
because it needs and expects this faculty to be its in- 
terpreter, and without this aid would be worse than 
useless. How is the right interpretation, the real 
meaning, of the Scriptures to be ascertained ? I answer. 
By reason. I know of no process by which the true 
sense of the New Testament is to pass from the page 
into my mind without the use of my rational faculties. 
It will not be pretended that this book is so exceed- 
ingly plain, its words so easy, its sentences so short, its 
meaning so exposed on the surface, that the whole truth 
may be received in a moment and without any intel- 
lectual effort. There is no such miraculous simplicity 
in the Scriptures, In truth, no book can be written so 
simply as to need no exercise of reason. Almost every 
word has more than one meaning, and judgment is re- 
quired to select the particular sense intended by the 
writer. Of all books, perhaps the Scriptures need most 
the use of reason for their just interpretation ; and this 5 



DISCOURSE III. 



125 



not from any imperfection, but from the strength, bold- 
ness, and figurative character of their style, and from 
the distance of the time when they were written. I 
open the New Testament and my eye lights on this 
passage : "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off and cast 
it from thee. " Is this language to be interpreted in 
its plainest and most obvious sense? Then I must 
mutilate my body, and become a suicide. I look again, 
and I find Jesus using these words to the Jews : " Fill 
ye up the measure of your iniquities." Am I to inter- 
pret this according to the letter, or the first ideas 
which it suggests ? Then Jesus commanded his hear- 
ers to steep themselves in crime, and was himself a 
minister of sin. It is only by a deliberate use of reason, 
that we can penetrate beneath the figurative, hyper- 
bolical, and often obscure style of the New Testament, 
to the real meaning. Let me go to the Bible, dismis- 
sing my reason and taking the first impression which 
the words convey, and there is no absurdity, however 
gross, into which I shall not fall. I shall ascribe a 
limited body to God and unbounded knowledge to man, 
for I read of God having limbs and of man knowing 
all things. Nothing is plainer, than that I must com- 
pare passage with passage, and limit one by another, 
and especially limit all by those plain and universal 
principles of reason, which are called common-sense, 
or I shall make revelation the patron of every folly 
and vice. So essential is reason to the interpretation 
of the Christian records. Revelation rests upon its 
authority. Can it then oppose it, or teach us to hold 
it in light esteem ? 

11* 



126 



DISCOURSE III. 



I have now furnished the proofs of my first position, 
that revelation is founded on reason ; and in discuss- 
ing this I have wished not only to support the main 
doctrine, but to teach you to reverence, more perhaps 
than you have done, your rational nature. This has 
been decried by theologians, until men have ceased to 
feel its sacredness and dignity. It ought to be regard- 
as God's greatest gift. It is his image within us. 
To renounce it would be to offer a cruel violence 
to ourselves, to take our place among the brutes. 
Better pluck out the eye, better quench the light of 
the body, than the light within us. We all feel, that 
the loss of reason, when produced by disease, is the 
most terrible calamity of life, and we look on a hospital 
for the insane as the receptacle of the most pitiable of 
our race. But, in one view, insanity is not so great an 
evil as the prostration of reason to a religious sect or 
a religious chief ; for the first is a visitation of Provi- 
dence, the last is a voluntary act, the work of our own 
hands. 

I am aware that those, who have spoken most con- 
temptuously of human reason, have acted from a good 
motive ; their aim has been to exalt revelation. They 
have thought that by magnifying this as the only 
means of divine teaching, they were adding to its dig- 
nity. But truth gains nothing by exaggeration ; and 
Christianity, as we have seen, is undermined by nothing 
more effectually, than by the sophistry which would 
bring discredit on our rational powers. Revelation 
needs no such support. For myself I do not find, 
that, to esteem Christianity, I must think it the only 
source of instruction to which I must repair. I need 



DISCOURSE III. 



127 



not make nature dumb, to give power or attraction to 
the teaching of Christ. The last derives new interest 
and confirmation from its harmony with the first. 
Christianity would furnish a weapon against itself, not 
easily repelled, should it claim the distinction of being 
the only light vouchsafed by God to men ; for, in that 
case, it would represent a vast majority of the human 
race as left by their Creator without guidance or hope, 
I believe, and rejoice to believe, that a ray from Heaven 
descends on the path of every fellow creature. The 
heathen, though in darkness when compared with the 
Christian, has still his light ; and it comes from the 
same source as our own, just as the same sun dispens- 
es, now the faint dawn, and now the perfect day. Let 
not nature's teaching be disparaged. It is from God 
as truly as his word. It is sacred, as truly as revela- 
tion. Both are manifestations of one infinite mind, and 
harmonious manifestations ; and without this agreement 
the claims of Christianity could not be sustained. 

In offering these remarks, I have not forgotten that 
they will expose me to the reproach of ministering to 
" the pride of reason " ; and I may be told, that there 
is no worse form of pride than this. The charge is so 
common, as to deserve a moment's attention. It will 
appear at once to be groundless, if you consider, that 
pride finds its chief nourishment and delight in the idea 
of our own superiority. It is built on something peculiar 
and distinctive, on something which separates us from 
others and raises us above them, and not on powers 
which we share with all around us. Now in speaking, 
as I have done, of the worth and dignity of reason, I 
have constantly regarded and represented this faculty 



128 



DISCOURSE III. 



as the common property of all human beings, I have 
spoken of its most important truths as universal and un- 
confined, such as no individual can monopolize or make 
the grounds of personal distinction or elevation. I have 
given, then, no occasion and furnished no nutriment to 
pride. I know, indeed, that the pride of reason or of 
intellect exists ; but how does it chiefly manifest itself? 
Not in revering that rational nature, which all men 
have derived from God ; but in exaggerating our par- 
ticular acquisitions or powers, in magnifying our dis- 
tinctive views, in looking contemptuously on other 
minds, in making ourselves standards for our brethren, 
in refusing new lights, and in attempting to establish 
dominion over the understandings of those who are 
placed within our influence. Such is the most com- 
mon form of the pride of intellect. It is a vice confin- 
ed to no sect, and perhaps will be found to prevail most 
where it is most disclaimed. 

I doubt not that they who insist so continually on the 
duty of exalting Scripture above reason, consider them- 
selves as particularly secured against the pride of rea- 
son. Yet none, I apprehend, are more open to the 
charge. Such persons are singularly prone to enforce 
their own interpretations of Scripture on others, and to 
see peril and crime in the adoption of different views 
from their own. Now, let me ask, by what power do 
these men interpret revelation ? Is it not by their rea- 
son ? Have they any faculties but the rational ones, by 
which to compare Scripture with Scripture, to explain 
figurative language, to form conclusions as to the will 
of God ? Do they not employ on God's word the same 
intellect as on his works ? And are not their interpre- 



DISCOURSE III. 



129 



tations of both equally results of reason ? It follows, 
that in imposing on others their explications of the Scrip- 
tures, they as truly arrogate to themselves a superiority 
of reason, as if they should require conformity to their 
explanations of nature. Nature and Scripture agree in 
this, that they cannot be understood at a glance. Both 
volumes demand patient investigation, and task all our 
powers of thought. Accordingly it is well known, that 
as much intellectual toil has been spent on theological 
systems as on the natural sciences : and unhappily it 
is not less known, that as much intellectual pride has 
been manifested in framing and defending the first as 
the last. I fear, indeed, that this vice has clung with 
peculiar obstinacy to the students of revelation. ?s"o 
where, I fear, have men manifested such infatuated 
trust in their own infallibility . such overweening fond- 
ness for their own conclusions, such positiveness, such 
impatience of contradiction, such arrogance towards the 
advocates of different opinions, as in the interpreta- 
tion of the Scriptures : and yet these very men, who 
so idolize their own intellectual powers, profess to 
humble reason, and consider a criminal reliance on it 
as almost exclusively chargeable on others. The true 
defence against the pride of reason, is, not to speak of 
it contemptuously, but to reverence it as God's inesti- 
mable gift to every human being, and as given to all 
for never-ceasing improvements, of which we see but 
the dawn in the present acquisitions of the noblest mind. 

I have now completed my views of the first prin- 
ciple, which I laid down in this discourse ; namely, 
that the Christian revelation rests on the authority of 



130 



DISCOURSE III. 



reason. Of course, it cannot oppose reason without 
undermining and destroying itself. I maintain, however, 
that it does not oppose, that it perfectly accords with 
reason. It is a rational religion. This is my second 
great position, and to this I ask your continued atten- 
tion. This topic might easily be extended to a great 
length. I might state in succession, all the principles 
of Christianity and show their accordance with reason. 
But I believe that more general views will be more 
useful, and such only can be given within the compass 
of a discourse. 

In the account which I gave you of reason in the 
beginning of this discourse, I confined myself to two 
of its functions, namely, its comprehension of univer- 
sal truths, and the effort it constantly makes to 
reduce the thoughts to harmony or consistency. Uni- 
versality and Consistency are among the chief attri- 
butes of reason. Do we find these in Christianity ? 
If so, its claim to the character of a rational religion 
will be established. These tests I will therefore apply 
to it, and I will begin with Consistency. 

That a religion be rational, nothing more is neces- 
sary than that its truths should consist or agree with 
one another, and with all other truths, whether derived 
from outward nature, or our own souls. Now I affirm, 
that the Christian doctrines have this agreement ; and the 
more we examine, the more brightly this mark of truth 
will appear. I go to the gospel, and I first compare its 
various parts with one another. Among these I find 
perfect harmony ; and what makes this more remarkable 
is, that Christianity is not taught systematically, or like 
p. science, Jesus threw out, if I may so speak, his 



DISCOURSE III. 



131 



precepts and doctrines incidentally, or as they were re- 
quired by the occasion, and yet, when they are brought 
together, they form a harmonious whole. I do not 
think it necessary to enlarge on this topic, because I 
believe it is not questioned by infidelity. I will name 
but one example of this harmony in Christianity. All 
its doctrines and all its precepts have that species 
of unity, w T hich is most essential in a religion, that is, 
they all tend to one object. They all agree in 
a single aim or purpose, and that is to exalt the human 
character to a height of virtue never known before. 
Let the skeptic name, if he can, one Christian prin- 
ciple which has not a bearing on this end. A consis- 
tency of this kind is the strongest mark of a rational 
religion which can be conceived. Let me observe, in 
passing, that, besides this harmony of the Christian 
doctrines with one another, there is a striking and beau- 
tiful agreement between the teachings of Jesus and his 
character, which gives confirmation to both. What- 
ever Jesus taught, you may see embodied in himself. 
There is perfect unity between the system and its 
Founder. His life republished what fell from his lips. 
With his lips he enjoined earnestly, constantly a 
strong and disinterested philanthropy ; and how harmo- 
niously and sublimely did his cross join with his word 
in enforcing this exalted virtue. With his lips he 
taught the mercy of God to sinners ; and of this attri- 
bute he gave a beautiful illustration in his own deep 
interest in the sinful, in his free intercourse with the 
most fallen, and in his patient efforts to recover them 
to virtue and to filial reliance on their Father in Heav- 
en. So, his preaching turned much on the importance 



132 



DISCOURSE III. 



of raising the mind above the world : and his own life 
was a constant renunciation of worldly interests, a 
cheerful endurance of poverty that he might make 
many truly rich. So, his discourses continually re- 
vealed to man the doctrine of immortality ; and in his 
own person he brought down this truth to men's sens- 
es, by rising from the dead and ascending to another 
state of being. — I have only glanced at the unity 
which subsists between Jesus and his religion. Chris- 
tianity, from every point of view, will be found an 
harmonious system, It breathes throughout one spirit 
and one purpose. Its doctrines, precepts, and exam- 
ples have the consistency of reason. 

But this is not enough. A rational religion must 
agree not only with itself, but with all other truths 
whether revealed by the outward creation or our own 
souls. I take then Christianity into the creation, I 
place it by the side of nature. Do they agree ? I say, 
Perfectly. I can discover nothing, in what claims to 
be God's word, at variance with his works. This is a 
bright proof of the reasonableness of Christianity. 
When I consult nature with the lights modern science 
affords, I see continually multiplying traces of the 
doctrine of One God. The more I extend my re- 
searches into nature, the more I see that it is a 
whole, the product of one wisdom, power, and good- 
ness. It bears witness to one Author, nor has its tes- 
timony been without effect ; for although the human 
mind has often multiplied its objects of worship, still 
it has always tended towards the doctrine of the divine 
unity, and has embraced it more and more firmly in 
the course of* human improvement. The Heathen, 



DISCOURSE III. 



133 



while he erected many altars, generally believed in one 
Supreme Divinity, to whom the inferior deities were 
subjected and from whom they sprung. Need I tell 
you of the harmony which subsists between nature and 
revelation in this particular ? To Christianity belongs 
the glory of having proclaimed this primitive truth 
with new power, and of having spread it over the 
whole civilized world. — Again. Nature gives in- 
timation of another truth, I mean of the universal, 
impartial goodness of God. When I look round 
on the creation, I see nothing to lead me to sus- 
pect that its Author confines his love to a few. 
The sun sends no brighter beam into the palace of the 
proudest king, than into the hut of the meanest peas- 
ant. The clouds select not one man's fields rather 
than his neighbour's, but shed down their blessings on 
rich and poor, and still more on the just and the unjust. 
True, there is a variety of conditions among men ; but 
this takes place, not by any interposition of God, but 
by fixed and general laws of nature. Impartial, 
universal goodness is the character in which God is 
revealed by his works, when they are properly un- 
derstood ; and need I tell you how brightly this truth 
shines in the pages of Christianity, and how this religion 
has been the great means of establishing it among men ? 
— Again. When I look through nature, nothing strikes 
me more than the union which subsists among all its 
works. Nothing stands alone in the creation. The 
humblest plant has intimate connexions with the air, 
the clouds, the sun. Harmony is the great law of 
nature, and how strikingly does Christianity coincide 
here with God's works ; for what is the design of this 
12 



134 



DISCOURSE III. 



religion, but to bring the human race, the intelligent 
creation of God, into a harmony, union, peace, like that 
which knits together the outward universe ? I will 
give another illustration. It is one of the great laws 
of nature, that good shall come to us through agents of 
God's appointment ; that beings shall receive life, sup- 
port, knowledge, and safety through the interposition 
and labors and sufferings of others. Sometimes whole 
communities are rescued from oppression and ruin 
chiefly by the efforts and sacrifices of a wise, disinter- 
ested, and resolute individual. How accordant with 
this ordination of nature is the doctrine of Christianity, 
that our Heavenly Father, having'purposed our recov- 
ery from sin and death, has instituted for this end the 
agency and mediation of his Son ; that he has given 
an illustrious deliverer to the world, through whose 
toils and sufferings we may rise to purity and immortal 
life. — I say, then, that revelation is consistent with 
nature, when nature is truly interpreted by reason. I 
see it bringing out with noonday brightness the truths 
which dawn in nature ; so that it is reason in its most 
perfect form. 

I have thus carried Christianity abroad into nature. 
I now carry it within, and compare it with the human 
soul ; and is it consistent with the great truths of reason 
which I discover there ? I affirm, that it is. When 
I look into the soul, I am at once struck with its im- 
measurable superiority to the body. I am struck with 
the contrast between these different elements of my 
nature, between this active, soaring mind, and these 
limbs and material organs which tend perpetually to 
the earth, and are soon to be resolved into dust. 



DISCOURSE III. 



135 



How consistent is Christianity with this inward teach- 
ing. In Christianity, with what strength, with what 
bold relief, is the supremacy of the spiritual nature 
brought out. What contempt does Jesus cast on the 
body and its interests, when compared with the re- 
demption of the soul. — Another great truth dawns 
on me when I look within. I learn more and more, 
that the great springs of happiness and misery are in 
the mind, and that the efforts of men to secure peace 
by other processes than by inward purification are vain 
strivings ; and Christianity is not only consistent with, 
but founded on this great truth; teaching us, that the 
kingdom of heaven is within us, and proposing, as its 
great end, to rescue the mind from evil, and to endue 
it with strength and dignity worthy its divine origin. 
— Again, when I look into the soul I meet intimations 
of another great truth. I discern in it capacities 
which are not fully unfolded here. I see desires 
which find no adequate good on earth. I see a prin- 
ciple of hope always pressing forward into futurity. 
Here are marks of a nature not made wholly for this 
world ; and how does Christianity agree with this teach- 
ing of our own souls ? Its great doctrine is that of a 
higher life, where the spiritual germ within us will 
open for ever, and where the immortal good after which 
the mind aspires will prove a reality, — Had I time, I 
might survey distinctly the various principles of the 
soul, the intellectual, moral, social, and active, and 
might show you how Christianity accords with them 
all, enlarging their scope and energy, proposing to 
them nobler objects, and aiding their developement 
by the impulse of a boundless hope. But, commend- 



136 



DISCOURSE III. 



ing these topics to your private meditation^ I will take 
but one more view of the soul. When I look within ? 
I see stains of sin, and fears and forebodings of guilt; 
and how adapted to such a nature is Christianity, a 
religion which contains blood-sealed promises of for- 
giveness to the penitent, and which proffers heavenly 
strength to fortify us in our conflict with moral evil. 
— I say, then, Christianity consists with the nature 
within us, as well as with nature around us. The 
highest truths in respect to the soul are not only re- 
sponded to, but are carried out by Christianity, so 
that it deserves to be called the perfection of reason. 

I have now shown, in a variety of particulars, that 
Christianity has the character of Consistency, and thus 
satisfies the first demand of reason. It does not divide 
the mind against itself, does not introduce discord into 
the intellect, by proposing doctrines which our con- 
sciousness and experience repel. But these views do 
not exhaust the present topic. It is not enough to 
speak of Christianity as furnishing views which har- 
monize with one another, and with all known truth. 
It gives a new and cheering consistency to the views 
with which we are furnished by the universe. Nature 
and providence, with all their beauty, regularity, and 
beneficence, have yet perplexing aspects. Their ele- 
ments are often seen in conflict with one another. 
Sunshine and storms, pleasure and pain, success and 
disaster, abundance and want, health and sickness, life 
and death, seem to ordinary spectators to be mixed 
together confusedly and without aim. Reason desires 
nothing so earnestly, so anxiously, as to solve these 
discordant appearances* as to discover some great, cen-- 



DISCOURSE III. 



137 



tral, reconciling truth, around which they may be arrang- 
ed, and from which they may borrow light and harmo- 
ny. This deep want of the rational nature, Christianity 
has supplied. It has disclosed a unity of purpose in 
the seemingly hostile dispensations of Providence, and 
opened to the mind a new world of order, beauty, and 
benevolent design. Christianity, revealing, as it does, 
the unbounded mercy of God to his sinful creatures ; 
revealing an endless futurity, in which the inequalities 
of the present state are to be redressed, and which re- 
duces by its immensity the sorest pains of life to light and 
momentary evils ; revealing a Moral Perfection, which 
is worth all pain and conflicts, and which is most effectu- 
ally and gloriously won amidst suffering and temptation ; 
revealing in Jesus Christ the sublimity and rewards of 
tried and all-enduring virtue ; revealing in Him the 
founder of a new moral kingdom or power, which is 
destined to subdue the world to God ; and proffering 
the Holy Spirit to all who strive to build up in them- 
selves and others the reign of truth and virtue ; Chris- 
tianity, I say, by these revelations, has poured a flood 
of light over nature and providence, and harmonized the 
infinite complexity of the works and ways of God. 
Thus it meets the first want of the rational nature 
the craving for consistency of views. It is reason's 
most effectual minister and friend. Is it not then 
eminently a Rational Faith ? 

Having shown that Christianity has the character of 
consistency, I proceed to the second mark or stamp of 
reason on a religion, that is, Universality; and this I 
claim for Christianity. This indeed is one of the most 
distinguishing features of our religion, and so obvious 
12* 



138 



DISCOURSE III. 



and striking as to need little illustration. When I exam- 
ine the doctrines, precepts, and spirit of Christianity, 
I discover, in them all, this character of Universality. 
I discover, nothing narrow, temporary, local. The 
gospel bears the stamp of no particular age or country. 
It does not concern itself with the perishable interests of 
communities or individuals ; but appeals to the Spirit- 
ual, Immortal, Unbounded principle in human nature. 
Its aim is to direct the mind to the Infinite Being and 
to an Infinite good. It is not made up, like other reli- 
gions, of precise forms and details ; but it inculcates im- 
mutable and all-comprehending principles of duty, leav- 
ing every man to apply them for himself to the endless 
variety of human conditions. It separates from God 
the partial, limited views of Judaism and heathenism, 
and holds him forth in the sublime attributes of the 
Universal Father. In like manner it inculcates phi- 
lanthropy without exceptions or bounds ; a love to 
man as man, a love founded on that immortal nature 
of which all men partake, and which binds us to recog- 
nise in each a child of God and a brother. The spirit 
of bigotry, which confines its charity to a sect, and the 
spirit of aristocracy, which looks on the multitude as 
an inferior race, are alike rebuked by Christianity ; 
which, eighteen hundred years ago, in a narrow and 
superstitious age, taught, what the present age is be- 
ginning to understand, that all men are essentially 
equal, and that all are to be honored, because made for 
immortality and indued with capacities of ceaseless 
improvement. The more I examine Christianity the 
more I am struck with its universality. I see in it 
a religion made for all regions and all times, for all 



DISCOURSE III. 



139 



classes and all stages of society. It is fitted, not 
to the Asiatic or the European, but to the essential 
principles of human nature, to man under the trop- 
ical or polar skies, to all descriptions of intellect 
and condition. It speaks a language which all men 
need and all can understand ; enjoins a virtue, which 
is man's happiness and glory in every age and clime : 
and ministers consolations and hopes which answer 
to man's universal lot, to the sufferings, the fear, and 
the self-rebuke, which cleave to our nature in every 
outward change. I see in it the light, not of one nation, 
but of the world ; and a light reaching beyond the world, 
beyond time, to higher modes of existence and to an in- 
terminable futurity. Other religions have been intended 
to meet the exigences of particular countries or times, 
and therefore society in its progress has outgrown them ; 
but Christianity meets more and more the wants of 
the soul in proportion to the advancement of our 
race, and thus proves itself to be Eternal Truth. Af- 
ter these remarks, may I not claim for Christianity 
that character of universality which is the highest 
distinction of reason ? To understand fully the con- 
firmation which these views give to the gospel, you 
must compare it with the religions, prevalent in the 
age of Christ, all of which bore the marks of narrow, 
local, temporary institutions. How striking the con- 
trast ! And how singular the fact, that amid this 
darkness there sprung up a religion so consistent and 
universal, as to deserve to be called the perfection of 
reason ! 



140 



DISCOURSE III. 



I do and must feel, my friends, that the claim of 
Christianity to the honor of being a rational religion 
is fully established. As such I commend it to you. 
As such it will more and more approve itself, in pro- 
portion as you study and practise it. You will never 
find cause to complain that, by adopting it, you have 
enslaved or degraded your highest powers. Here 
then I might stop, and might consider my work as done. 
But I am aware that objections have been made to the 
rational character of our religion, which may still linger 
in the minds of some of my hearers. A brief notice 
of these may aid the purpose, and will form a proper 
conclusion, of this discourse. 

I imagine that, were some who are present to speak, 
they would tell me, that, if Christianity be judged by its 
fruits, it deserves any character but that of rationaL 
I should be told that no religion has borne a more abun- 
dant harvest of extravagance and fanaticism. I should 
be told that reason is a calm, reflecting, sober princi- 
ple, and I should be asked whether such is the charac- 
ter of the Christianity which has overspread the world. 
Perhaps some of you will remind me of the feverish, 
wild, passionate religion, which is now systematically 
dispersed through our country, and I shall be asked 
whether a system under which such delusions prevail 
can be a rational one. 

To these objections I answer, You say much that is 
true. I grant that reason is a calm and reflecting prin- 
ciple, and I see little calmness or reflection among 
many who take exclusively the name of Christ, But 
I say, you have no right to confound Christianity with 
its professors. This religion, as you know, has come 



DISCOURSE III. 



141 



down to us through many ages of darkness, during 
which it must have been corrupted and obscured. 
Common candor requires that you should judge of it 
as it came from its Founder. Go, then, to its original 
records ; place yourselves near Jesus ; and tell me if 
you ever found yourselves in the presence of so calm 
a teacher. We indeed discern in Jesus great earnest- 
ness, but joined with entire self-control. Sensibility 
breathes through his whole teaching and life, but al- 
ways tempered with wisdom. Amidst his boldest 
thoughts and expressions, we discover no marks of 
ungoverned feeling or a diseased imagination. Take, 
as an example, his longest discourse, the Sermon on 
the Mount. How weighty the thoughts ! How grave 
and dignified the style ! You recollect, that the mul- 
titude were astonished, not at the passionate vehe- 
mence, but at the authority, with which he spoke. 
Read next the last discourse of Jesus to his disciples 
in St. John's Gospel. What a deep, yet mild and 
subdued tenderness mingles with conscious greatness 
in that wonderful address. Take what is called the 
Lord's Prayer, which Jesus gave as the model of all 
prayer to God. Does that countenance fanatical fer- 
vor, or violent appeals to our Creator ? Let me 
further ask, Does Jesus any where place religion in 
tumultuous, ungoverned emotion ? Does he not teach 
us, that obedience, not feeling, marks and constitutes 
true piety, and that the most acceptable offering to 
God is to exercise mercy to our fellow creatures ? 
When I compare the clamorous preaching and passion- 
ate declamation, too common in the Christian world, 
with the composed dignity, the deliberate wisdom^ 



142 



DISCOURSE III. 



the freedom from all extravagance, which characterized 
Jesus, I can imagine no greater contrast ; and I am sure 
that the fiery zealot is no representative of Chris- 
tianity. 

I have done with the first objection ; but another 
class of objections is often urged against the reasona- 
ble character of our religion. It has been strenuously 
maintained, that Christianity contains particular doc- 
trines, which are irrational, and which involve the 
whole religion, to which they are essential, in their 
own condemnation. To this class of objections I have 
a short reply. I insist that these offensive doctrines 
do not belong to Christianity, but are human additions, 
and therefore do not derogate from its reasonableness 
and truth. What is the doctrine most frequently ad- 
duced to fix the charge of irrationality on the gospel ? 
It is the Trinity. This is pronounced by the unbe- 
liever a gross offence to reason. It teaches that there 
is one God, and yet that there are three divine per- 
sons. According to the doctrine, these three persons 
perform different offices, and sustain different relations 
to each other. One is Father," another his Son. One 
sends, another is sent. They love each other, con- 
verse with each other, and make a covenant with each 
other ; and yet, with all these distinctions, they are, 
according to the doctrine, not different beings, but one 
being, one and the same God. Is this a rational 
doctrine ? has often been the question of the objec- 
tor to Christianity. I answer, No. I can as easily 
believe that the whole human race are one man, as 
that three infinite persons, performing such different 
offices, are one God, But I maintain, that, because 



DISCOURSE III. 



143 



the Trinity is irrational, it does not follow that the 
same reproach belongs to Christianity ; for this doctrine 
is no part of the Christian religion. I know, there 
are passages which are continually quoted in its de- 
fence ; but allow me to prove doctrines in the same 
way, that is, by detaching texts from their connexion 
and interpreting them without reference to the general 
current of Scripture, and I can prove any thing and 
every thing from the Bible. I can prove, that God 
has human passions. I can prove transubstantiation, 
which is taught much more explicitly than the Trinity. 
Detached texts prove nothing. Christ is called God ; 
the same title is given to Moses and to rulers. Christ has 
said, " I and my Father are one ; " so he prayed that all 
his disciples might be one, meaning not one and the same 
being, but one in affection and purpose. I ask you, be- 
fore you judge on this point, to read the Scriptures as a 
whole, and to inquire into their general strain and teach- 
ing in regard to Christ. I find him uniformly distin- 
guishing between himself and God, calling himself, 
not God the Son, but the Son of God, continually speak- 
ing of himself as sent by God, continually referring 
his power and miracles to God. I hear him saying, 
that of himself he can do nothing, and praying to his 
Father under the character of the only true God. 
Such I affirm to be the tenor, the current, the general 
strain of the New Testament ; and the scattered pas- 
sages, on which a different doctrine is built, should 
have no weight against this host of witnesses. Do not 
rest your faith on a few texts. Sometimes these fa- 
vorite texts are no part of Scripture. For example, 
the famous passage on which the Trinity mainly 



144 



DISCOURSE III. 



rests, " There are three that bear record in Heaven, 
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these 
three are one," — this text, I say, though found at 
present in John's Epistle, and read in our churches, has 
been pronounced by the ablest critics a forgery ; and a 
vast majority of the educated ministers of this country 
are satisfied, that it is not a part of Scripture. Suffer no 
man, then, to select texts for you as decisive of religious 
controversies. Read the whole record for yourselves, 
and possess yourselves of its general import. I am 
very desirous to separate the doctrine in question from 
Christianity, because it fastens the charge of irration- 
ality on the whole religion. It is one of the great 
obstacles to the propagation of the Gospel. The Jews 
will not hear of a Trinity. I have seen in the coun- 
tenance, and heard in the tones of the voice, the horror 
with which that people shrink from the doctrine, that 
God died on the cross. Mahometans, too, when they 
hear this opinion from Christian missionaries, repeat 
the first article of their faith, " There is one God;" 
and look w T ith pity or scorn on the disciples of Jesus, as 
deserters of the plainest and greatest truth of religion. 
Even the Indian of our wilderness, who worships the 
Great Spirit, has charged absurdity on the teacher who 
has gone to indoctrinate him in a Trinity. How many, 
too, in Christian countries have suspected the whole 
religion for this one error. Believing then, as I do, 
that it forms no part of Christianity, my allegiance to 
Jesus Christ calls me openly to withstand it. In so 
doing I would wound no man's feelings. I doubt not, 
that they who adopt this doctrine intend, equally w T ith 
those who oppose it, to render homage to the truth and 



DISCOURSE III. 



145 



service to Christianity. They think that their peculiar 
faith gives new interest to the character and new au- 
thority to the teaching of Jesus. But they grievously 
err. The views, by which the}- hope to build up love 
towards Christ, detract from the perfection of his Father ; 
and I fear, that the kind of piety, which prevails now 
in the Christian world, bears witness to the sad influ- 
ence of this obscuration of the true glory of God. We 
need not desert reason or corrupt Christianity, to ensure 
the purest, deepest love towards the only true God. or 
towards Jesus Christ, whom he has sent for our re- 
demption. 

I have named one doctrine, which is often urged 
against Christianity as irrational. There is one more 
on which I would offer a few remarks. Christianity 
has often been reproached with teaching, that God 
brings men into life totally depraved, and condemns 
immense multitudes to everlasting misery for sins to 
which their nature has irresistibly impelled them. This 
is said to be irrational, and consequently such must be 
the religion which teaches it. I certainly shall not at- 
tempt to vindicate this theological fiction. A more 
irrational doctrine could not, I think, be contrived : 
and it is something worse ; it is as immoral in its ten- 
tendency, as it is unreasonable. It is suited to alienate 
men from God and from one another. Were it really 
believed (which it cannot be), men would look up with 
dread and detestation to the Author of their being, and 
look round with horror on their fellow creatures. It 
would dissolve society. Were men to see in one 
another wholly corrupt beings, incarnate fiends, with- 
out one genuine virtue, society would become as re- 

13 



146 



DISCOURSE III. 



pulsive as a den of lions or a nest of vipers. All confi- 
dence, esteem, love, would die ; and without these, the 
interest, charm, and worth of existence would expire. 
What a pang would shoot through a parent's heart, if 
he were to see in the smiling infant a moral being, con- 
tinually and wholly propense to sin. in whose mind were 
thickly sown the seeds of hatred to God and goodness, 
and who had commenced his existence under the curse 
of his Creator ? What good man could consent to be a 
parent, if his offspring were to be born to this infinitely 
wretched inheritance ? I say the doctrine is of im- 
moral tendency ; but I do not say that they who 
profess it are immoral. The truth is. that none do or 
can hold it in its full and proper import. I have seen 
its advocates smile as benignantly on the child whom 
their creed has made a demon, as if it were an angel : 
and I have seen them mingling with their fellow crea- 
tures as cordially and confidingly as if the doctrine of 
total depravity had never entered their ears. Per- 
haps the most mischievous effect of the doctrine is 
the dishonor which it has thrown on Christianity. 
This dishonor I would wipe away. Christianity teach- 
es no such doctrine. Where do you find it in the 
New Testament : Did Jesus teach it, when he took 
little children in his arms and blessed them, and said Of 
such is the kingdom of God'"? Did Paul teach it. 
when he spoke of the Gentiles, who have not the law, 
or a written revelation, but who do by nature the things 
contained in the law i Christianity indeed speaks 
strongly of human guilt, but always treats men as be- 
ings who have the power of doing right, and who have 
come into existence under the smile of their Creator. 



DISCOURSE III. 



147 



I have now completed my vindication of the claim 
of the gospel to the character of a rational religion ; 
and my aim has been, not to serve a party, but the 
cause of our common Christianity. At the present 
day, one of the most urgent duties of its friends is, to 
rescue it from the reproach of waging war with rea- 
son. The character of our age demands this. There 
have been times when Christianity, though loaded with 
unreasonable doctrines, retained its hold on men's faith ; 
for men had not learned to think. They received 
their religion as children learn the catechism ; they 
substituted the priest for their own understandings, and 
cared neither what nor why they believed. But that 
day is gone by, and the spirit of freedom, which has 
succeeded it, is subjecting Christianity to a scrutiny 
more and more severe ; and if this religion cannot 
vindicate itself to the reflecting, the calm, the wise, 
as a reasonable service, it cannot stand. Fanati- 
cal sects may, for a time, spread an intolerant 
excitement through a community, and impose silence 
on the objections of the skeptical. But fanaticism is 
the epidemic of a season; it wastes itself by its own 
violence. Sooner or later the voice of reflection will 
be heard. Men will ask, What are the claims of 
Christianity ? Does it bear the marks of truth ? And 
if it be found to war with nature and reason, it will be, 
and it ought to be, abandoned. On this ground, I am 
anxious that Christianity should be cleared from all 
human additions and corruptions. If indeed irrational 
doctrines belong to it, then I have no desire to sep- 
arate them from it. I have no desire, for the sake of 
upholding the gospel, to wrap up and conceal, much 



148 



DISCOURSE III. 



less to deny, any of its real principles. Did I think 
that it was burdened with one irrational doctrine, I 
would say so, and I would leave it, as I found it, with 
this millstone round its neck. But I know none such. 
I meet, indeed, some difficulties in the narrative part 
of the New Testament ; and there are arguments in 
the Epistles, which, however suited to the Jew r s, to 
whom they were first addressed, are not apparently 
adapted to men at large ; but I see not a principle of 
the religion, which my reason, calmly and impartially 
exercised, pronounces inconsistent with any great truth . 
I have the strongest conviction, that Christianity is 
reason in its most perfect form r and therefore I plead 
for its disengagement from the irrational additions with 
which it has been clogged for ages. 

With these views of Christianity, I do and I must 
hold it fast. I cannot surrender it to the cavils or 
scoffs of infidelity. I do not blush to own it, for it is a 
rational religion. It satisfies the wants of the intellect 
as well as those of the heart. I know that men of 
strong minds have opposed it. But, as if Providence 
intended that their sophistry should carry a refutation 
on its own front, they have generally fallen into errors 
so gross and degrading, as to prove them to be any 
thing rather than the apostles of reason. When I go 
from the study of Christianity to their writings, I feel 
as if I were passing from the warm, bright sun into a 
chilling twilight, which too often deepens into utter 
darkness. I am not, then, ashamed of the Gospel. I 
see it glorified by the hostile systems which are reared 
for its destruction. I follow Jesus, because he is emi- 
nently "the Light " ; and I doubt not, that, to his true 



DISCOURSE III. 



149 



disciples, he will be a guide to that world, where the 
obscurities of our present state will be dispersed, and 
where reason as well as virtue will be unfolded under 
the quickening influence and in the more manifest 
presence of God. 



13* 



DISCOURSE I V. 



1 PETER ii. 17. 

HONOR ALL MEN. 

Among the many and inestimable blessings of Chris- 
tianity, I regard, as not the least, the new sentiment with 
which it teaches man to look upon his fellow beings ; 
the new interest w T hich it awakens in us towards every 
thing human ; the new importance which it gives to the 
soul ; the new relation which it establishes between 
man and man. In this respect, it began a mighty 
revolution, which has been silently spreading itself 
through society, and which, I believe, is not to stop, 
until new ties shall have taken place of those which 
have hitherto, in the main, connected the human race. 
Christianity has as yet but begun its work of reforma- 
tion. Under its influences, a new order of society is 
advancing, surely though slowly ; and this beneficent 
change it is to accomplish in no small measure by re- 
vealing to men their own nature, and teaching them to 
" honor all" who partake it. 

As yet Christianity has done little, compared with 
what it is to do, in establishing the true bond of union 
between man and man. The old bonds of society still 
continue in a great degree. They are instinct, inter- 



DISCOURSE IV. 



151 



est, force. The true tie, which is mutual respect, call- 
ing forth mutual, growing, never-failing acts of love, is 
as yet little known. A new revelation, if I may so 
speak, remains to be made ; or rather, the truths of the 
old revelation in regard to the greatness of human na- 
ture, are to be brought out from obscurity and neglect. 
The soul is to be regarded with a religious reverence, 
hitherto unfelt ; and the solemn claims of every being to 
whom this divine principle is imparted, are to be estab- 
lished on the ruins of those pernicious principles, both 
in church and state, which have so long divided man- 
kind into the classes of the abject Many and the self- 
exalting Few. 

There is nothing of which men know so little, as 
themselves. They understand incomparably more of 
the surrounding creation, of matter, and of its laws, 
than of that spiritual principle, to which matter was 
made to be the minister, and without which the out- 
ward universe would be worthless. Of course, no 
man can be wholly a stranger to the soul, for the soul 
is himself, and he cannot but be conscious of its most 
obvious workings. But it is to most a chaos, a region 
shrouded in ever-shifting mists, baffling the eye and 
bewildering the imagination. The affinity of the mind 
with God, its moral power, the purposes for which its 
faculties were bestowed, its connexion with futurity, 
and the dependence of its whole happiness on its 
own right action and progress, these truths, though they 
might be expected to absorb us, are to most men lit- 
tle more than sounds, and to none of us those living 
realities, which, I trust, they are to become. That con- 
viction, without which we are all poor, of the unlimited 



152 



DISCOURSE IV. 



and immortal nature of the soul, remains in a great degree 
to be developed. Men have as yet no just respect for 
themselves, and of consequence no just respect for 
others. The true bond of society is thus wanting ; and 
accordingly there is a great deficiency of Christian 
benevolence. There is indeed much instinctive, native 
benevolence, and this is not to be despised ; but the 
benevolence of Jesus Christ, which consists in a calm 
purpose to suffer, and, if need be, to die for our fellow 
creatures, the benevolence of Christ on the cross, which 
is the true pattern to the Christian, this is little known; 
and what is the cause ? It is this. We see nothing in 
human beings to entitle them to such sacrifices; we do 
not think them worth suffering for. Why should we 
be martyrs for beings, who awaken in us little more of 
moral interest than the brutes? 

I hold, that nothing is to make man a true lover of 
man, but the discovery of something interesting and great 
in human nature. We must see and feel, that a human 
being is something important and of immeasurable im- 
portance. We must see and feel the broad distance 
between the spiritual life within us, and the vege- 
table or animal life which acts around us. I cannot 
love the flower, however beautiful, with a disinter- 
ested affection, which will make me sacrifice to it my 
own prosperity. You will in vain exhort me to attach 
myself, with my whole strength of affection, to the in- 
ferior animals, however useful or attractive ; and why 
not? They want the capacity of truth, virtue, and 
progress. They want that principle of duty, which 
alone gives permanence to a being ; and accordingly 
they soon lose their individual nature and go to mingle 



DISCOURSE IV, 



153 



with the general mass. A human being deserves a 
different affection from what we bestow on inferior 
creatures, for he has a rational and moral nature, by 
which he is to endure for ever, by which he may 
achieve an unutterable happiness, or sink into an un- 
utterable woe. He is more interesting through what is 
in him, than the earth or heavens ; and the only way to 
love him aright, is to catch some glimpse of this im- 
mortal power within him. Until this is done, all 
charity is little more than instinct ; we shall embrace 
the great interests of human nature with coldness. 

It may be said, that Christianity has done much to 
awaken benevolence, and that it has taught men to 
call one another brethren. Yes, to call one another 
so ; but has it as yet given the true feeling of broth- 
erhood ? We undoubtedly feel ourselves to be all of one 
race, and this is well. We trace ourselves up to one 
pair, and feel the same blood flowing in our veins. But 
do we understand our Spiritual Brotherhood ? Do we 
feel ourselves to be derived from one Heavenly Parent, 
in whose image we are all made, and whose perfection 
we may constantly approach ? Do we feel that there 
is one divine life in our own and in all souls ? This 
seems to me the only true bond of man to man. 
Here is a tie more sacred, more enduring, than all the 
ties of this earth. Is it felt, and do we in conse- 
quence truly honor one another? 

Sometimes, indeed, we see men giving sincere, pro- 
found, and almost unmeasured respect to their fellow 
creatures ; but to whom? To great men ; to men dis- 
tinguished by a broad line from the multitude ; to men 
preeminent by genius, force of character, daring effort, 



154 



DISCOURSE IV. 



high station, brilliant success. To such, honor is giv- 
en ; but this is not to "honor all men"; and the 
homage paid to such is generally unfriendly to that 
Christian estimate of human beings for which I am 
now pleading. The great are honored at the expense 
of their race. They absorb and concentrate the world's 
admiration and their less gifted fellow beings are 
thrown by their brightness into a deeper shade, and 
passed over with a colder contempt. Now I have no 
desire to derogate from the honor paid to great men, 
but I say, Let them not rise by the depression of the 
multitude . I say, that great men, justly regarded, ex- 
alt our estimate of the human race, and bind us to the 
multitude of men more closely ; and when they are 
not so regarded; when they are converted into idols, 
when they serve to wean our interest from ordinary 
men, they corrupt us, they sever the sacred bond of 
humanity which should attach us to all, and our char- 
acters become vitiated by our very admiration of great- 
ness. The true view of great men is, that they are 
only examples and manifestations of our common na- 
ture, showing what belongs to all souls, though un- 
folded as yet only in a few. The light which shines 
from them is, after all, but a faint revelation of the power 
which is treasured up in every human being. They are 
not prodigies, not miracles, but natural developements 
of the human soul. They are indeed as men among 
children, but the children have a principle of growth 
which leads to manhood. 

That great men and the multitude of minds are 
of one family, is apparent, I think, in the admiration 
xvhich the great inspire into the multitude. A sincere, 



DISCOURSE IV. 



enlightened admiration always springs from some- 
thing congenial in him who feels it with him who in- 
spires it. He that can understand and delight in great- 
ness was created to partake of it ; the germ is in him ; 
and sometimes this admiration, in what we deem infe- 
rior minds, discovers a nobler spirit than belongs to the 
great man who awakens it ; for sometimes the great 
man is so absorbed in his own greatness as to admire 
no other ; and 1 should not hesitate to say, that a com- 
mon mind, which is yet capable of a generous admira- 
tion, is destined to rise higher than the man of emi- 
nent capacities, who can enjoy no power or excellence 
but his own. When I hear of great men, I wish not 
to separate them from their race, but to blend them 
with it. I esteem it no small benefit of the philoso- 
phy of mind, that it teaches us that the elements of 
the greatest thoughts of the man of genius exist in 
his humbler brethren, and that the faculties, which the 
scientific exert in the profoundest discoveries, are pre- 
cisely the same w 7 ith those which common men em- 
ploy in the daily labors of life. 

To show the grounds on which the obligation to 
honor all men rests, I might take a minute survey 
of that human nature which is common to all, and set 
forth its claims to reverence. But leaving this w r ide 
range, I observe that there is one principle of the soul, 
which makes all men essentially equal, which places 
all on a level as to means of happiness, w^hich may 
place in the first rank of human beings those who are 
the most depressed in worldly condition, and which 
therefore gives the most depressed a title to interest 

i 



156 



DISCOURSE IV. 



and respect. I refer to the Sense of Duty , to the pow- 
er of discerning and doing right, to the moral 
and religious principle, to the inward monitor which 
speaks in the name of God, to the capacity of virtue 
or excellence. This is the great gift of God. We 
can conceive no greater. In seraph and archan- 
gel, we can conceive no higher energy than the 
power of virtue, or the power of forming themselves 
after the will and moral perfections of God. This 
power breaks down all barriers between the seraph 
and the lowest human being ; it makes them brethren. 
Whoever has derived from God this perception and 
capacity of rectitude, has a bond of union with the spiri- 
tual world, stronger than all the ties of nature. He pos- 
sesses a principle, which, if he is faithful to it, must carry 
him forward for ever, and ensures to him the improve- 
ment and happiness of the highest order of beings. 

It is this moral power, which makes all men essen- 
tially equal, which annihilates all the distinctions of 
this world. Through this, the ignorant and the poor 
may become the greatest of the race ; for the greatest 
is he who is most true to the principle of duty. It 
is not improbable, that the noblest human beings are 
to be found in the least favored conditions of society, 
among those, whose names are never uttered beyond 
the narrow circle in which they toil and suffer, who 
have but " two mites " to give away, who have perhaps 
not even that, but who " desire to be fed with the 
crumbs which fall from the rich man's table " ; for in 
this class may be found those, who have withstood 
the severest temptation, who have practised the most 
arduous duties, who have confided in God under the 



DISCOURSE IV. 



157 



heaviest trials, who have been most wronged and have 
forgiven most ; and these are the great, the exalted. 
It matters nothing, what the particular duties are to 
which the individual is called, — how minute or ob- 
scure in their outward form. Greatness in God's sight 
lies, not in the extent of the sphere which is filled, or 
of the effect which is produced, but altogether in the 
power of virtue in the soul, in the energy with which 
God's will is chosen, with which trial is borne, and 
goodness loved and pursued. 

The sense of duty is the greatest gift of God. The 
Idea of Right is the primary and the highest revelation 
of God to the human mind, and all outward revelations 
are founded on and addressed to it. All mysteries of 
science and theology fade away before the grandeur of 
the simple perception of duty, which dawns on the 
mind of the little child. That perception brings him 
into the moral kingdom of God. That lays on him 
an everlasting bond. He, in whom the conviction of 
duty is unfolded, becomes subject from that moment 
to a law, which no power in the universe can abro- 
gate. He forms a new and indissoluble connexion 
with God, that of an accountable being. He begins to 
stand before an inward tribunal, on the decisions of 
which his whole happiness rests : he hears a voice, 
which, if faithfully followed, will guide him to perfec- 
tion, and in neglecting which he brings upon himself 
inevitable misery. We little understand the solemnity 
of the moral principle in every human mind. We think 
not how awful are its functions. We forget that it is 
the germ of immortality. Did we understand it. we 

14 



158 



DISCOURSE IV. 



should look with a feeling of reverence on every being 
to whom it is given. 

Having shown in the preceding remarks, that there 
is a foundation in the human soul for the honor 
enjoined in our text towards all men, I proceed to 
observe, that, if we look next into Christianity, we shall 
find this duty enforced by new and still more solemn 
considerations. This whole religion is a testimony to 
the worth of man in the sight of God, to the impor- 
tance of human nature, to the infinite purposes for 
which we were framed. God is there set forth, as 
sending, to the succour of his human family, his Belov- 
ed Son, the bright image and representative of his 
own perfections ; and sending him, not simply to roll 
away a burden of pain and punishment (for this, how- 
ever magnified in systems of theology, is not his highest 
work), but to create men after that divine image 
which he himself bears, to purify the soul from every 
stain, to communicate to it new power over evil, and 
to open before it Immortality as its aim and des- 
tination, — Immortality, by which we are to understand, 
not merely a perpetual, but an ever-improving and 
celestial being. Such are the views of Christianity. 
And these blessings it proffers, not to a few, not to 
the educated, not to the eminent, but to all hu- 
man beings, to the poorest, and the most fallen ; and 
we know, that, through the power of its promises, it 
has in not a few instances raised the most fallen to 
true greatness, and given them in their present virtue 
and peace an earnest of the Heaven which it un- 
folds. Such is Christianity. Men, viewed in the light 
of this religion, are beings cared for by God, to whom 



DISCOURSE IV. 



159 



he has given his Son, on whom he pours forth his 
Spirit, and whom he has created for the highest good 
in the universe, for participation in his own perfec- 
tions and happiness. My friends, such is Christianity. 
Our skepticism as to our own nature cannot quench 
the bright light which that religion sheds on the soul 
and on the prospects of mankind ; and just as far as 
we receive its truth, we shall honor all men. 

I know I shall be told that Christianity speaks of 
man as a sinner, and thus points him out to abhorrence 
and scorn. I know it speaks of human sin, but it 
does not speak of this as indissolubly bound up 
with the soul, as entering into the essence of human 
nature, but as a temporary stain, which it calls on us to 
wash away. Its greatest doctrine is, that the most 
lost are recoverable, that the most fallen may rise, 
and that there is no height of purity, power, felicity 
in the universe, to which the guiltiest mind may not, 
through penitence, attain. Christianity indeed gives 
us a deeper, keener feeling of the guilt of mankind, 
than any other religion. By the revelation of per- 
fection in the character of Jesus Christ, it shows us 
how imperfect even the best men are. But it re- 
veals perfection in Jesus, not for our discouragement, 
but as our model, reveals it only that we may thirst 
for and approach it. From Jesus I learn what man 
is to become, that is, if true to this new light : and true 
he may be. 

Christianity, I have said, shows man as a sinner, 
but I nowhere meet in it those dark views of our race 
which would make us shrink from it as from a nest of 
venomous reptiles. According to the courteous style 



160 



DISCOURSE IV. 



of theology, man has been called half brute and half 
devil. But this is a perverse and pernicious exaggera- 
tion. The brute, as it is called, that is, animal appetite, 
is indeed strong in human beings ; but is there nothing 
within us but appetite ? Is there nothing to war with 
it ? Does this constitute the essence of the soul ? Is 
it not rather an accident, the result of the mind's union 
with matter ? Is not its spring in the body, and may 
it not be expected to perish with the body ? In ad- 
dition to animal propensities, I see the tendency to 
criminal excess in all men's passions. I see not one only, 
but many Tempters in every human heart. Nor am I 
insensible to the fearful power of these enemies to our 
virtue. But is there nothing in man but temptation, but 
propensity to sin ? Are there no counterworking pow- 
ers ? no attractions in virtue ? no tendencies to God ? 
no sympathies with sorrow ? no reverence for greatness ? 
no moral conflicts ? no triumphs of principle ? This very 
strength of temptation seems to me to be one of the in- 
dications of man's greatness. It shows a being framed 
to make progress through difficulty, suffering, and con- 
flict ; that is, it shows a being designed for the highest 
order of virtues ; for we all feel by an unerring instinct, 
that virtue is elevated in proportion to the obstacles 
which it surmounts, to the power with which it is cho- 
sen and held fast. I see men placed by their Creator 
on a field of battle ; but compassed with peril that 
they may triumph over it ; and though often overborne, 
still summoned to new efforts, still privileged to ap- 
proach the source of all power and to seek " grace in 
time of need, " and still addressed in tones of encour- 
agement by a celestial leader, who has himself fought 



DISCOURSE IV. 



161 



and conquered, and holds forth to them his own crown 
of righteousness and victory. 

From these brief views of human nature and of 
Christianity you will see the grounds of the solemn ob- 
ligation of honoring all men, of attaching infinite im- 
portance to human nature, and of respecting it, even 
in its present infant, feeble, tottering state. This 
sentiment of honor or respect for human beings, strikes 
me more and more as essential to the Christian char- 
acter. I conceive that a more thorough understand- 
ing and a more faithful culture of this, would do 
very much to carry forward the church and the 
world. In truth, I attach to this sentiment such im- 
portance, that I measure by its progress the progress 
of society. I judge of public events very much by 
their bearing on this. I estimate political revolutions, 
chiefly by their tendency to exalt men's conceptions 
of their nature, and to inspire them with respect for 
one another's claims. The present stupendous move- 
ments in Europe naturally suggest and almost force 
upon me this illustration of the importance which I 
have given to the sentiment enjoined in our text. 
Allow me to detain you a few moments on this topic. 

What is it then, 1 ask, which makes the present 
revolutionary movement abroad so interesting ? I 
answer, that I see in it the principle of respect for 
human nature and for the human race developing itself 
more powerfully, and this to me constitutes its chief 
interest. I see in it proofs, indications, that the mind 
is awakening to a consciousness of what it is, and of 
what it is made for. In this movement I see man 
becoming to himself a higher object. I see him at- 

14* 



162 



DISCOURSE IV. 



taining to the conviction of the equal and indestructi- 
ble rights of every human being. I see the dawning 
of that great principle, that the individual is not made 
to be the instrument of others, but to govern himself 
by an inward law, and to advance towards his proper 
perfection ; that he belongs to himself and to God, and 
to no human superior. I know, indeed, that, in the 
present state of the world, these conceptions are ex- 
ceeding unsettled and obscure ; and in truth little effort 
has hitherto been made to place them in a clear light, 
and to give them a definite and practical form, in men's 
minds. The multitude know not with any distinctness 
what they want. Imagination, .unschooled by reason 
and experience, dazzles them with bright but baseless 
visions. They are driven onward with a perilous vio- 
lence, by a vague consciousness of not having found 
their element ; by a vague yet noble faith in a higher 
good than they have attained ; by impatience under 
restraints, which they feel to be degrading. In this 
violence, however, there is nothing strange, nor ought 
it to discourage us. It is, I believe, universally true, 
that great principles, in their first developement, mani- 
fest themselves irregularly. It is so in religion. In 
history we often see religion, especially after long de- 
pression, breaking out in vehemence and enthusiasm, 
sometimes stirring up bloody conflicts, and through 
struggles establishing a calmer empire over society. 
In like manner political history shows us, that men's 
consciousness of their rights and essential equality has 
at first developed itself passionately. Still the con- 
sciousness is a noble one, and the presage of a better 
social state. 



DISCOURSE IV. 



163 



Am I asked what I hope from the present revolu- 
tionary movements in Europe ? I answer, that I hope 
a good which includes all others, and which almost 
hides all others from my view. I hope the subversion 
of institutions, by which the true bond between man 
and man has been more or less dissolved, by which 
the will of one or a few has broken down the will, the 
heart, the conscience of the many : and I hope that, 
in the place of these, are to grow up institutions, which 
will express, cherish, and spread far and wide a just 
respect for human nature, which will strengthen in 
men a consciousness of their powers, duties, and 
rights, which will train the individual to moral and 
religious independence, which will propose as their 
end the elevation of all orders of the community, and 
which will give full scope to the best minds in this 
work of general improvement. I do not say, that I 
expect it to be suddenly realized. The sun, which 
is to bring on a brighter day, is rising in thick and 
threatening clouds. Perhaps the minds of men were 
never more unquiet than at the present moment. 
Still I do not despair. That a higher order of ideas 
or principles is beginning to be unfolded ; that a 
wider philanthropy is beginning to triumph over 
the distinctions of ranks and nations ; that a new 
feeling of what is due to the ignorant, poor, and 
depraved has sprung up : that the right of every 
human being to such an education as shall call forth 
his best faculties, and train him more and more to 
control himself, is recognised as it never was before : 
and that government is more and more regarded as 
intended not to elevate the few, but to guard the rights 



164 



DISCOURSE IV. 



of all ; that these great revolutions in principle have com- 
menced and are spreading, who can deny ? and to me 
they are prophetic of an improved condition of human 
nature and human affairs. — Oh that this melioration 
might be accomplished without blood ! As a Chris- 
tian, I feel a misgiving when I rejoice in any good, 
however great, for which this fearful price has been 
paid. In truth, a good, so won, is necessarily imper- 
fect and generally transient, War may subvert a des- 
potism, but seldom builds up better institutions. Even 
when joined, as in our own history, with high princi- 
ples, it inflames and leaves behind it passions, which 
make liberty a feverish conflict of jealous parties, and 
which expose a people to the tyranny of faction under 
the forms of freedom. Few things impair men's rev- 
erence for human nature, more than war; and did I 
not see other and holier influences than the sword 
working out the regeneration of the race, I should 
indeed despair. 

In this discourse I have spoken of the grounds and 
importance of that honor or respect which is due from 
us, and enjoined on us, towards all human beings. The 
various forms, in which this principle is to be exercised 
or manifested, I want time to enlarge on. I would 
only say, " Honor all men." Honor man from the 
beginning to the end of his earthly course. Honor 
the child. Welcome into being the infant, with a 
feeling of its mysterious grandeur, with the feeling, 
that an immortal existence has begun, that a spirit has 
been kindled which is never to be quenched. Honor 
the child. On this principle all good education rests. 



DISCOURSE IV. 



165 



Never shall we learn to train up the child, till we take 
it in our arms, as Jesus did, and feel distinctly that 
u of such is the kingdom of heaven. " In that short 
sentence is taught the spirit of the true system of edu- 
cation ; and for want of understanding it, little effectual 
aid, I fear, is yet given to the heavenly principle in 
the infant soul. — Again. Honor the poor. This sen- 
timent of respect is essential to improving the connex- 
ion between the more and less prosperous conditions 
of society. This alone makes beneficence truly god- 
like. "Without it, almsgiving degrades the receiver. 
We must learn how slight and shadowy are the distinc- 
tions between us and the poor ; and that the last in 
outward condition may be first in the best attributes 
of humanity. A fraternal union, founded on this deep 
conviction, and intended to lift up and strengthen the 
exposed and tempted poor, is to do infinitely more for 
that suffering class, than all our artificial associations ; 
and till Christianity shall have breathed into us this 
spirit of respect for our nature, wherever it is found, 
we shall do them little good. I conceive, that in the 
present low state of Christian virtue, we little appre- 
hend the power which might be exerted over the 
fallen and destitute, by a benevolence which should 
truly, thoroughly recognise in them the image of God. 

Perhaps none of us have yet heard or can com- 
prehend the tone of voice, in which a man, thor- 
oughly impressed with this sentiment, would speak to 
a fellow creature. It is a language hardly known on 
earth ; and no eloquence, I believe, has achieved such 
wonders as it is destined to accomplish. I must stop, 
though I have but begun the application of the prin- 



166 



DISCOURSE IV. 



ciple which 1 have urged. I will close as I began, 
with saying, that the great revelation which man now 
needs, is a revelation of man to himself. The faith 
which is most wanted, is a faith in what we and our 
fellow beings may become, a faith in the divine germ 
or principle in every soul. In regard to most of what 
are called the mysteries of religion, we may innocent- 
ly be ignorant. But the mystery within ourselves, 
the mystery of our spiritual, accountable, immortal 
nature, it behoves us to explore. Happy are they 
who have begun to penetrate it, and in whom it has 
awakened feelings of awe towards themselves, and of 
deep interest and honor towards their fellow creatures* 



DISCOURSE V. 



MATTHEW xvi. 24. 

THEN SAID JESUS UNTO HIS DISCIPLES, IF ANY MAN 
WILL COME AFTER ME, LET HIM DENY HIMSELF, AND 
TAKE UP HIS CROSS, AND FOLLOW ME, 

This passage is an example of our Saviour's mode 
of teaching. He has given us his truth in the costume 
of the age ; and this style is so common in the New 
Testament, that an acquaintance with the usages of 
those times is necessary to the understanding of a large 
part of his instructions. The cross was then a mode 
of punishment reserved for the greatest criminals, and 
was intended to inflict the deepest disgrace as well 
as sorest pain. "To take up the cross" had there- 
fore become a proverbial expression of the most dread- 
ed suffering and shame. By this phrase in the text, 
Jesus intended to teach, that no man could become 
his disciple without such a deep conviction of the 
truth and excellence of his religion, as would fortify 
the mind against persecution, reproach, and death. 
The command " to deny ourselves " is more literal, but 
is an instance of what is very common in our Saviour's 
teaching, I mean, of the use of unlimited expressions, 



168 



DISCOURSE V. 



which require to be restrained by the good sense of 
the hearer, and which, if taken without considerable 
modification, may lead into pernicious error. We 
know that this precept, for want of a wise caution, has 
driven men to self-inflicted penance and to the austeri- 
ties of the cloister and wilderness: and it is one among 
many proofs of the necessity of a calm and sober judg- 
ment to a beneficial use of Christianity. 

In this discourse I shall otter remarks on the limits 
or just extent of Christian Self-denial, and on the de- 
sign of Providence in so constituting us, as to make self- 
denial necessary : and in discussing these topics I 
shall set before you its obligation, necessity, and ex- 
cellence. 

We are to deny ourselves : but how far ? to what 
extent ? This is our first inquiry. Are we to deny 
ourselves wholly ? To deny ourselves in every power, 
faculty, and affection of our nature ? Has the duty no 
bounds ? For example, are we to deny the highest 
part of our nature, I mean conscience, or the moral 
faculty ? Are we to oppose our sense of right, our 
desire of virtue? Every Christian says. ?so. Con- 
science is sacred ; and revelation is intended to quicken, 
not resist it. 

Asain, are we to deny reason, the intellectual fac- 
ulty, by which we weigh evidence, trace out causes 
and effects, ascend to universal truths, and seek to 
establish harmony among all our views. The an- 
swer to this question seems as plain as to the former. 
Yet many good men have seemed to dread reason, 
have imagined an inconsistency between faith and a 



DISCOURSE V. 



169 



free use of our intellectual powers, and have insisted 
that it is a religious duty " to prostrate our under- 
standings." To some this may even seem a princi- 
pal branch of Christian self-denial. The error I think 
is a great one; and believing that the honor, progress, 
and beneficial influence of Christianity are involved in 
its removal, I wish to give it a brief consideration. 

I am told that I must deny reason. I ask, Must 
I deny it, when it teaches me that there is a God ? 
If so, the very foundation of religion is destroyed, and 
I am abandoned to utter unbelief Again, must I 
deny reason when it forbids the literal interpretation 
of the text, which commands us to hate father and 
mother and our own lives ? If so, I must rupture the 
most sacred ties of domestic life, and must add to social 
vices the crime of self-murder. Surely reason, in its 
teachings on these great subjects, is not to be denied, 
but revered and obeyed ; and if revered here, where 
ought it to be contemned and renounced ? 

I am told, that we have a better guide than reason, 
even God's word, and that this is to be followed and 
the other denied. But I ask, How do I know that 
Christianity is God's word ? Are not the evidences 
of this religion submitted to reason ? and if this faculty 
be unworthy of trust, is not revelation necessarily in- 
volved in the same condemnation ? The truth is, and 
it ought not to be disguised, that our ultimate reliance 
is and must be on our own reason. Faith in this power 
lies at the foundation of all other faith. No trust can be 
placed in God, if we discredit the faculty by which 
God is discerned. — I have another objection to the 
doctrine, that we must deny reason in order to follow 
15 



170 



DISCOURSE V. 



revelation. Reason is the very faculty to which rev- 
elation is addressed, and by which alone it can be ex- 
plained. Without it we should be incapable of divine 
teaching just as without the eye we should lose the 
happiest influences of the sun ; and they who would 
discourage the use of reason, that we may better receive 
revelation, are much like those, who should bind up or 
pluck out the eye, that we might enjoy to the full 
the splendor of day. 

Perhaps I shall be pointed to the many and gross er- 
rors into which reason has fallen on almost every sub- 
ject, and shall be told that here are motives for dis- 
trusting and denying it. I reply, first, by asking how 
we detect these errors. By what power do we learn 
that reason so often misguides us ? Is it not by reason 
itself? and shall we renounce it on account of its capaci- 
ty of rectifying its own wrong judgments ? — Consider 
next, that on no subject has reason gone more astray, 
than in the interpretation of the Scriptures ; so that if 
it is to be denied on account of its errors, we must 
especially debar it from the study of revelation ; in 
other words, we must shut the word of God in despair, 
a consequence, which, to a Protestant, is a sufficient 
refutation of the doctrine from which it flows. 

A common method of enforcing the denial of rea- 
son, is to contrast it with the Infinite Intelligence of 
God, and then to ask whether it can be prostrated too 
submissively, or renounced too humbly, before Him. I 
acknowledge reverently the immeasurable superiority 
of God to human reason ; but I do not therefore con- 
temn or renounce it ; for, in the first place, it is as true 
of the "rapt seraph" as of man, that his intelligence is 



DISCOURSE V. 



171 



most narrow, compared with the divine. Is no honor 
therefore clue to angelic wisdom ? In the next place, 
I observe that human reason, imperfect though it be, 
is still the offspring of God, allied to him intimately, 
and worthy of its divine Parent. There is no extrava- 
gance in calling it, as is sometimes done, " a beam of 
the infinite light " ; for it involves in its very essence 
those immutable and everlasting principles of truth 
and rectitude, which constitute the glory of the Divine 
Mind. It ascends to the sublime idea of God by pos- 
sessing kindred attributes, and knows him only through 
its affinity with him. It carries within itself the germ 
of that spiritual perfection, which is the great end of 
the creation. Is it not then truly a " partaker of a 
divine nature ?? ? Can we think or speak of it too 
gratefully or with too much respect ? — The Infinity of 
God, so far from calling on me to prostrate and annihilate 
reason, exalts my conception of it. It is my faith in this 
perfection of the Divine Mind that inspires me with 
reverence for the human, for they are intimately connect- 
ed, the latter being a derivation from the former, and 
endued with the power of approaching its original 
more and more through eternity. Severed from God, 
reason would lose its grandeur. In his infinity it has 
at once a source and a pledge of endless and unbound- 
ed improvement. God delights to communicate him- 
self; and therefore his greatness, far from inspiring 
contempt for human reason, gives it a sacredness, and 
opens before it the most elevating hopes. The error 
of men is not, that they exaggerate, but that they do 
not know or suspect the worth and dignity of their 
rational nature. 



172 



DISCOURSE V. 



Perhaps I shall be told, that reason is not to be de- 
nied universally, but only in cases where its teachings 
are contradicted by revelation. To this I reply, that 
a contradiction between reason and a genuine revela- 
tion cannot exist. A doctrine claiming a divine origin 
would refute itself, by opposing any of the truths, which 
reason intuitively discerns, or which it gathers from 
nature. God is the " Father of lights " and the " Au- 
thor of concord, " and he cannot darken and distract 
the human mind by jarring and irreconcilable instruc- 
tions. He cannot subvert the authority of the very 
faculty, through which we arrive at the knowledge 
of himself. A revelation from the Author of our ra- 
tional nature will certainly be adapted to its funda- 
mental laws. I am aware, that it is very possible to 
give the name of reason to rash prejudices and cor- 
rupt opinions, and that on this ground we may falsely 
pronounce a genuine revelation to be inconsistent with 
reason ; and our liableness to this delusion binds us 
to judge calmly, cautiously, and in the fear of God. 
But if, after a deliberate and impartial use of our best 
faculties, a professed revelation seems to us plainly 
to disagree with itself or to clash with great principles 
which we cannot question, we ought not to hesitate 
to withhold from it our belief. I am surer that my ra- 
tional nature is from God, than that any book is an 
expression of his will. This light in my own breast 
is his primary revelation, and all subsequent ones must 
accord with it, and are in fact intended to blend with 
and brighten it. My hearers, as you value Christianity, 
never speak of it as in any thing opposed to man's ra- 
tional nature. Join not its foes in casting on it this re- 



DISCOURSE V. 



173 



proach. It was given, not to supersede our rational fac- 
ulties, but to quicken and invigorate them, to open 
a wider field to thought, to bring peace into the intellect 
as well as into the heart, to give harmony to all our 
views. We grievously wrong Christianity by sup- 
posing it to raise a standard against reason or to de- 
mand the sacrifice of our noblest faculties. These 
are her allies, friends, kindred. With these she holds 
unalterable concord. Whenever doctrines are taught 
you from the Christian records, opposing any clear 
conviction of reason and conscience, be assured, that 
it is not the teaching of Christ which you hear. Some 
rash human expounder is substituting his own weak, 
discordant tones for the voice of God, which they no 
more resemble than the rattling chariot-wheel does 
Heaven's awful thunder. — Never, never do vio- 
lence to your rational nature. He who in any case 
admits doctrines which contradict reason, has bro- 
ken down the great barrier between truth and false- 
hood, and lays open his mind to every delusion. The 
great mark of error, which is inconsistency, ceases to 
shock him. He has violated the first law of the in- 
tellect, and must pay the fearful penalty. Happy will 
it be for him, if, by the renunciation of reason, he be 
not prepared for the opposite extreme, and do not, 
through a natural reaction, rush into the excess of in- 
credulity. In the records of individuals and of the 
race, it is not uncommon for an era of intellectual pros- 
tration to be followed by an era of proud and licen- 
tious philosophy ; nor will this alternation cease to 
form the history of the human mind, till the just rights 
of reason be revered. 

15* 



174 



DISCOURSE V. 



I will notice one more form, and a very common 
one, in which the duty of denying reason is urged. 
We are told that there is one case, in which we ought 
to prostrate our understandings, and that is, the case of 
mysteries, whenever they are taught in the word of God. 
The answer to this popular language is short. Mys- 
teries, continuing such, cannot, from their very nature, 
be believed, and of consequence reason incurs no blame 
in refusing them assent. This will appear by consider- 
ing what a mystery is. In the language of Scripture, 
and in its true sense, it is a secret, something unknown. 
I say, then, that from its nature it cannot be an object 
of belief; for to know and to believe are expressions 
of the same act of the mind, differing chiefly in 
this, that the former is more applicable to what admits 
of demonstration, the latter to probable truth. I have 
no disposition to deny the existence of mysteries. 
Every truth involves them. Every object which falls 
under our notice, the most common and simple, 
contains much that we do not know and cannot now 
penetrate. We know not, for example, what it is 
which holds together the particles of the meanest 
stone beneath our feet, nor the manner in which the 
humblest plant grows. That there are mysteries, secrets, 
things unknown without number, I should be the last to 
deny. I only maintain, and in so doing I utter an identi- 
cal proposition, that what is mysterious, secret, unknown, 
cannot at the same time be known or an object of faith. 
It is a great and common error, to confound facts which 
we understand, with the mysteries which lurk under 
them, and to suppose that in believing the first we be- 
lieve the last. But no two things are more distinct, nor 



DISCOURSE V. 



175 



does the most thorough knowledge of the one imply 
the least perception of the other. For example, my 
hand is moved by the act of my will. This is a plain fact. 
The words which convey it are among the most intelligi- 
ble. I believe it without doubt: But under this fact, 
w T hich I so well know, lies a great mystery. The man- 
ner in which the will acts on the hand, or the process 
which connects them, is altogether unknown. The fact 
and the mystery, as you see, have nothing in common. 
The former is so manifest, that I cannot, if I would, 
withhold from it my faith. Of the latter not even a 
glimpse is afforded me ; not an idea of it has dawned 
on the mind ; and without ideas, there can, of course, 
be no knowledge or belief. These remarks apply 
to revelation as well as to nature. The subjects of 
which revelation treats, God, Christ, human nature, 
holiness, heaven, contain infinite mysteries. What 
is revealed in regard to them is indeed as noth- 
ing compared with w 7 hat remains secret. But " se- 
cret things belong to God," and the pride of reason is 
manifested, not in declining, but in professing, to make 
them objects of faith. — It is the influence of time and 
of intellectual improvement to bring mysteries to light, 
both in nature and religion ; and just as far as this process 
goes on, the belief of them becomes possible and right. 
Thus, the cause of eclipses, which was once a mystery, 
is now disclosed, and who of us does not believe it ? In 
like manner Christ revealed " the mysteries of the king- 
dom of heaven," or the purposes and methods of God 
which had been kept secret for ages, in relation to 
the redemption of the world from sin, death, and woe. 
Being now revealed, or having ceased to be mysteries, 



176 



DISCOURSE V. 



these have become objects of faith, and reason ranks 
them among its most glorious truths. 

From what has been said, we see, that to deny rea- 
son is no part of religion. Never imagine yourselves 
called to prostrate and contemn this noble nature. 
Reverence conscience. Foster, extend, enlighten intel- 
lect. Never imagine that you are forsaking God. in 
reposing a trust in the faculties he has given you. 
Only exercise them with impartiality, disinterested- 
ness, and a supreme love of truth, and their instruc- 
tions will conspire with revelation, and a beautiful 
harmony will more and more manifest itself in the 
lessons which God's book and God's works, which 
Christ and conscience teach. 

But, if Reason and Conscience are not to be denied, 
what is ? I answer, that there are other principles in 
our nature. Man is not wholly reason and conscience. 
He has various appetites, passions, desires, resting on 
present gratification and on outward objects ; some of 
which we possess in common with inferior animals, such 
as sensual appetites, and anger, and others belong 
more to the mind, such as love of power, love of hon- 
or, love of property, love of society, love of amuse- 
ment, or a taste for literature and elegant arts ; but all 
referring to our present being, and terminating chiefly 
on ourselves, or on a few beings who are identified 
with ourselves. These are to be denied or renounced ; 
by which I mean not exterminated, but renounced as 
masters, guides, lords, and brought into strict and entire 
subordination to our moral and intellectual powers. It 
is a false idea, that religion requires the extermination 



DISCOURSE V. 



177 



of any principle, desire, appetite, or passion, which 
our Creator has implanted. Our nature is a whole, a 
beautiful whole, and no part can be spared. You 
might as properly and innocently lop off a limb from 
the body, as eradicate any natural desire from the mind. 
All our appetites are in themselves innocent and useful, 
ministering to the general weal of the soul. They 
are like the elements of the natural world, parts of a 
wise and beneficent system, but, like those elements, 
are beneficent only when restrained. 

There are two remarks relating to our appetites 
and desires, which will show their need of frequent 
denial and constant control. In the first place, it is 
true of them all, that they do not carry within them- 
selves their own rule. They are blind impulses. 
Present their objects, and they are excited as easily 
when gratification would be injurious as when it would 
be useful. We are not so constituted, for example, 
that we hunger and thirst for those things only which 
will be nutritive and wholesome, and lose all hunger 
and thirst at the moment when we have eaten or 
drunk enough. We are not so made, that the desire 
of property springs up only when property can be 
gained by honest means, and that it declines and dies 
as soon as we have acquired a sufficiency for ourselves 
and for usefulness. Our desires are undiscerning in- 
stincts, generally directed to what is useful, but often 
clamoring for gratification, which would injure health, 
debilitate the mind, or oppose the general good ; and 
this blindness of desire makes the demand for self- 
denial urgent and continual, 



173 



DISCOURSE V. 



I pass to a second remark. Our appetites and de- 
sires carry with them a principle of growth or ten- 
dency to enlargement. They expand by indulgence, 
and. if not restrained, they fill and exhaust the soul, 
and hence are to be strictly watched over and denied. 
Nature has set bounds to the desires of the brute, but 
not to human desire, which partakes of the illimitable- 
ness of the soul to which it belongs. In brutes, for 
example, the animal appetites impel to a certain round 
of simple gratifications, beyond which they never pass. 
But man, having imagination and invention, is able 
by these noble faculties to whet his sensual desires 
indefinitely. He is able to form new combinations of 
animal pleasures, and to provoke appetite by stimu- 
lants. The East gives up its spices, and the South 
holds not back its vintage. Sea and land are rifled 
for luxuries. Whilst the animal finds its nourishment 
in a few plants, perhaps in a single blade, man's table 
groans under the spoils of all regions : and the conse- 
quence is, that in not a few cases the whole strength 
of the soul runs into appetite, just as some rich soil 
shoots up into poisonous weeds, and man, the rational 
creature of God, degenerates into the most thorough 
sensualist. — As another illustration of the tendency 
of our desires to grow and usurp the whole mind, 
take the love of property. We see this every day 
gaining dangerous strength, if left to itself, if not de- 
nied or curbed. It is a thirst which is inflamed by 
the very copiousness of its draughts. Anxiety grows 
with possession. Riches become dearer by time. The 
love of money, far from withering in life's winter, 
strikes deeper and deeper root in the heart of age. 



DISCOURSE V. 179 

He who has more than he can use or manage, grows 
more and more eager and restless for new gains, muses 
by day and dreams by night of wealth ; and in this 
way the whole vigor of his soul, of intellect and 
affection, shoots up into an intense, unconquerable, 
and almost infinite passion for accumulation. 

It is an interesting and solemn reflection, that the 
very nobleness of human nature may become the 
means and instrument of degradation. The powers 
which ally us to God, when pressed into the service 
of desire and appetite, enlarge desire into monstrous 
excess, and irritate appetite into fury. The rapidity 
of thought, the richness of imagination, the resources 
of invention, when enslaved to any passion, give it an 
extent and energy unknown to inferior natures ; and 
just in proportion as this usurper establishes its empire 
over us, all the nobler attainments and products of the 
soul perish. Truth, virtue, honor, religion, hope, 
faith, charity, die. Here we see the need of self-de- 
nial. The lower principles of our nature not only act 
blindly, but, if neglected, grow indefinitely, and over- 
shadow and blight and destroy every better growth. 
Without self-restraint and self-denial, the proportion, 
order, beauty, and harmony of the spiritual nature are 
subverted, and the soul becomes as monstrous and 
deformed, as the body would become, were all the 
nutriment to flow into a few organs and these the least 
valuable, and to break out into loathsome excres- 
cences, whilst the eye, the ear, and the active limbs 
should pine, and be palsied, and leave us without gui- 
dance or power. 



180 



DISCOURSE V. 



Do any of you now ask, how it comes to pass that 
we are so constituted ; why we are formed with 
desires so blind and strong, and tending so constantly 
to enlargement and dominion ; and how we can recon- 
cile this constitution with God's goodness ? This is 
our second question. Some will answer it, by saying, 
that this constitution is a sinful nature derived from 
our first parents ; that it comes not from God, but from 
Adam ; that it is a sad inheritance from the first fallen 
pair ; and that God is not to be blamed for it, but our 
original progenitor. But, I confess, this explanation 
does not satisfy me. Scripture says, it was God who 
made me, not Adam. What I was at birth, I was by 
the ordinance of God. Make the connexion between 
Adam and his posterity as close as you will, God must 
have intended it, and God has carried it into effect. 
My soul, at the moment of its creation, was as fresh 
from the hands of the Deity, as if no human parent 
had preceded me ; and I see not how to shift off on any 
other being the reproach of my nature, if it de- 
serve reproach. But does it merit blame ? Is the 
tendency to excess and growth, which we are con- 
scious of in our passions and appetites, any derogation 
from the goodness or wisdom of our Maker? Can we 
find only evil in such a constitution ? Perhaps it may 
minister to the highest purpose of God. 

It is true, that as we are now made, our appetites 
and desires often war against reason, conscience, and 
religion. But why is this warfare appointed ? Not to 
extinguish these high principles ; but to awaken 
and invigorate them. It is meant to give them 
a field for action, occasion for effort, and means of 



DISCOURSE V. 



181 



victory. True, virtue is thus opposed and endan- 
gered ; but virtue owes its vigor and hardihood to obsta- 
cles, and wins its crown by conflict. I do not say, 
that God can find no school for character but tempta- 
tion, and trial, and strong desire ; but I do say, that 
the present state is a fit and noble school. You, my 
hearers, wxmld have the path of virtue, from the very 
beginning, smooth and strewed with flowers ; and would 
this train the soul to energy ? You would have pleas- 
ure always coincide with duty ; and how then would 
you attest your loyalty to duty ? You would have 
conscience and desire always speak the same language, 
and prescribe the same path ; and how then would 
conscience assert its supremacy? God has implanted 
blind desires, which often rise up against reason and 
conscience, that he may give to these high faculties 
the dignity of dominion and the joy of victory. He 
has surrounded us with rivals to himself, that we may 
love him freely, and by our own unfettered choice 
erect his throne in our souls. He has given us strong 
desires of inferior things, that the desire of excellence 
may grow stronger than all. Make such a world as 
you wish, let no appetite or passion ever resist God's 
will, no object of desire ever come in competition with 
duty ; and where would be the resolution, and energy, 
and constancy, and effort, and purity, the trampling 
under foot of low interests, the generous self-surrender, 
the heroic devotion, all the sublimities of virtue, which 
now throw lustre over man's nature and speak of his 
immortality? You would blot the precept of self- 
denial from the Scriptures, and the need of it from hu- 
man life, and, in so doing, you would blot out almost 
16 



182 



DISCOURSE V. 



every interesting passage in man's history. Let me ask 
you, when you read that history, what is it which most 
interests and absorbs you, which seizes on the imagi- 
nation and memory, which agitates the soul to its cen- 
tre ? Who is the man whom you select from the re- 
cords of time as the object of your special admiration ? 
Is it he, who lived to indulge himself? whose cur- 
rent of life flowed most equably and pleasurably ? 
whose desires were crowned most liberally with means 
of gratification ? whose table was most luxuriantly 
spread ? and whom fortune made the envy of his neigh- 
bourhood by the fullness of her gifts ? Were such the 
men to whom monuments have been reared, and whose 
memories, freshened with tears of joy and reverence, 
grow and flourish and spread through every age ? O no ! 
He whom we love, whose honor we most covet, is 
he who has most denied and subdued himself; who 
has made the most entire sacrifice of appetites and 
passions and private interest to God, and virtue, and 
mankind ; who has walked in a rugged path, and clung 
to good and great ends in persecution and pain ; who, 
amidst the solicitations of ambition, ease, and private 
friendship, and the menaces of tyranny and malice, 
has listened to the voice of conscience, and found a 
recompense for blighted hopes and protracted suffer- 
ing in conscious uprightness and the favor of God. 
Who is it that is most lovely in domestic life ? It is 
the Martyr to domestic affection, the mother forget- 
ting herself, and ready to toil, suffer, die for the 
happiness and virtue of her children. Who is it that 
we honor in public life ? It is the Martyr to his 
country, he who serves her, not when she has honors 



DISCOURSE V. 



183 



for his brow and wealth for his coffers, but who clings 
to her in her danger and falling glories, and thinks life a 
cheap sacrifice to her safety and freedom. Whom does 
the church retain in most grateful remembrance, and 
pronounce holy and blessed ? The self-denying, self- 
immolating apostle, the fearless confessor, the devoted 
martyr, men who have held fast the truth even in 
death, and bequeathed it to future ages amidst blood. 
Above all, to what moment of the life of Jesus does 
the Christian turn, as the most affecting and sublime 
illustration of his divine character ? It is that mo- 
ment, when, in the spirit of self-sacrifice, deny- 
ing every human passion, and casting away every 
earthly interest, he bore the agony and shame of the 
cross. Thus all great virtues bear the impress of self- 
denial ; and were God's present constitution of our 
nature and life so reversed as to demand no renunciation 
of desire, the chief interest and glory of our present 
being would pass away. There would be nothing in 
history to thrill us with admiration. We should have 
no consciousness of the power and greatness of the 
soul. We should love feebly and coldly, for we 
should find nothing in one another to love earnestly. 
Let us not then complain of Providence because it has 
made self-denial necessary ; or complain of religion 
because it summons us to this work. Religion and 
nature here hold one lan^ua^e. Our own souls bear 
witness to the teaching of Christ, that it is the "nar- 
row way" of self-denial "'which leadeth unto life." 

My friends, at death, if reason is spared to us and 
memory retains its hold on the past, will it gratify us 
to see, that we have lived, not to deny, but to indulge 



184 



DISCOURSE V. 



ourselves, that we have bowed our souls to any pas- 
sion, that we gave the reins to lust, that w T e were pal- 
sied by sloth, that, through love of gain, we hardened 
ourselves against the claims of humanity, or, through 
love of man's favor, parted with truth and moral inde- 
pendence, or that in any thing reason and conscience 
were sacrificed to the impulse of desire, and God for- 
gotten for present good ? Shall we then find comfort in 
remembering our tables of luxury, our pillows of down, 
our wealth amassed and employed for private ends, or 
our honors won by base compliance with the world ? 
Did any man at his death ever regret his conflicts with 
himself, his victories over appetite, his scorn of impure 
pleasures, or his sufferings for righteousness' sake ? 
Did any man ever mourn, that he had impoverished 
himself by integrity, or worn out his frame in the 
service of mankind ? Are these the recollections 
which harrow the soul, and darken and appall the 
last hour? To whom is the last hour most serene 
and full of hope ? Is it not to him, who, amidst perils 
and allurements, has denied himself, and taken up the 
cross with the holy resolution of Jesus Christ ? 



DISCOURSE VI. 



MATTHEW xvl 24. 

THEN SAID JESUS UNTO HIS DISCIPLES, IF ANY MAN 
WILL COME AFTER ME, LET HIM DENY HIMSELF, AND 
TAKE UP HIS CROSS, AND FOLLOW ME. 

In the preceding discourse, I spoke of the just limits 
and moral dignity of self-denial. I resume the subject, 
because it throws much light on the nature of true 
virtue, and helps us to distinguish moral goodness from 
qualities which resemble it. Clear conceptions on this 
point are inestimable. To love and seek excellence, we 
must know what it is, and separate it from counterfeits. 
For want of just views of virtue and piety, men's admi- 
ration and efforts are often wasted, and sometimes carry 
them wide of the great object of human life. Perhaps 
the truth on this subject cannot be brought out more 
clearly than by considering the nature of Self-denial. 
Such will be the aim of this discourse. 

To deny ourselves is to deny, to withstand, to re- 
nounce whatever, within or without, interferes with our 
conviction of right, or with the will of God. It is to 
suffer, to make sacrifices, for duty or our principles. 
The question now offers itself, What constitutes the 
singular merit of this suffering? Mere suffering; we all 
16* 



186 



DISCOURSE VI. 



know, is not virtue. Evil men often endure pain as 
well as the good, and are evil still. This and this 
alone constitutes the worth and importance of the sac- 
rifice, suffering, which enters into self-denial, that it 
springs from and manifests Moral Strength, power 
over ourselves, force of purpose, or the mind's resolute 
determination of itself to duty. It is the proof and 
result of inward energy. Difficulty, hardship, suffer- 
ing, sacrifices, are tests and measures of Moral Force, 
and the great means of its enlargement. To with- 
stand these is the same thing as to put forth power. 
Self-denial, then, is the will acting with power in the 
choice and prosecution of duty. Here we have the 
distinguishing glory of self-denial, and here we have 
the essence and distinction of a good and virtuous 
man. 

The truth to which these views lead us. and which I 
am now solicitous to enforce, is this, that the great 
characteristic of a virtuous or religious mind is strength 
of Moral purpose. This force is the measure of ex- 
cellence. The very idea of Duty implies that we are 
bound to adopt and pursue it with a stronger and 
more settled determination than any other object, and 
virtue consists in fidelity to this primary dictate of 
conscience. We have virtue only as far as we exert 
inward energy, or as far as we put forth a strong and 
overcoming will in obeying the law of God and of 
our own minds. Let this truth be deeply felt. Let 
us not confide in good emotions, in kind feelings, in 
tears for the suffering, or in admiration of noble deeds. 
These are not goodness, in the moral and Christian sense 
of that word. It is force of upright and holy purpose, 



DISCOURSE VI. 



187 



attested and approved by withstanding trial, temptation, 
allurement, and suffering ; it is this, in which virtue 
consists. I know nothing else which an enlightened con- 
science approves, nothing else which God will accept. 

I am aware, that if I were called upon to state my 
ideas of a perfect character, I should give an answer 
that would seem at first to contradict the doctrine just 
expressed, or to be inconsistent with the stress which 
I have laid on strength of moral purpose. I should say, 
that perfection of mind, like that of the body, con- 
sists of two elements, of strength and beauty ; that it 
consists of firmness and mildness, of force and tender- 
ness, of vigor and grace. It would ill become a teacher 
of Christianity to overlook the importance of sympa- 
thy, gentleness, humility, and charity, in his definition 
of moral excellence. The amiable, attractive, mild 
attributes of the mind are recommended as of great 
price in the sight of God by Him who was emphati- 
cally meek and lowly in heart. Still I must say, that 
all virtue lies in strength of character or of moral pur- 
pose : for these gentle, sweet, winning qualities rise 
into virtue only when pervaded and sustained by moral 
energy. On this they must rest, by this they must 
be controlled and exalted, or they have no moral 
worth. 

I acknowledge love, kindness, to be a great virtue ; 
but what do I mean by love, when I thus speak ? Do 
I mean a constitutional tenderness ? an instinctive 
sympathy ? the natural and almost necessary attach- 
ment to friends and benefactors ? the kindness which 
is inseparable from our social state, and which is never 
wholly extinguished in the human breast ? In all these 



188 



DISCOURSE VI. 



meotions of our nature, I see the kind design of God ; 
I see a beauty ; 1 see the germ and capacity of an 
ever-growing charity. But they are not virtues, they 
are not proper objects of moral approbation, nor do 
they give any sure pledge of improvement. This 
natural amiableness I too often see in company with 
sloth, with uselessness, with the contemptible vanity 
and dissipation of fashionable life. It is no ground of 
trust, no promise of fidelity, in any of the great exi- 
gencies of life. The love, the benevolence, which I 
honor as virtue, is not the gift of nature or condi- 
tion, but the growth and manifestation of the soul's 
moral power. It is a spirit chosen as excellent, 
cherished as divine, protected with a jealous care, and 
especially fortified by the resistance and subjection of 
opposite propensities. It is the soul, determining 
itself to break every chain of selfishness, to enlarge and 
to invigorate the kind affections, to identify itself 
with other beings, to sympathize, not with a few, but 
with all the living and rational children of God, to 
honor others' worth, to increase and enjoy their hap- 
piness, to partake in the universal goodness of the 
Creator, and to put down within itself every motion 
of pride, anger, or sensual desire, inconsistent with this 
pure charity. In other words, it is strength of holy 
purpose, infused into the kind affections, which raises 
them into virtues, or gives them a moral worth, not 
found in constitutional amiableness. 

I read in the Scriptures the praises of meekness. 
But when I see a man meek or patient of injury 
through tameness, or insensibility, or want of self- 
respect, passively gentle, meek through constitution 



DISCOURSE VI. 



189 



or fear, I look on him with feelings very different 
from veneration. It is the meekness of principle ; it is 
mildness replete with energy ; it is the forbearance of 
a man who feels a wrong, but who curbs anger, who 
though injured resolves to be just, who voluntarily 
remembers that his foe is a man and a brother, who 
dreads to surrender himself to his passions, who in the 
moment of provocation subjects himself to reason and 
religion, and who holds fast the great truth, that the 
noblest victory over a foe is to disarm and subdue 
him by equity and kindness, — -it is this meekness which 
I venerate, and which seems to me one of the divin- 
est virtues. It is moral power, the strength of virtu- 
ous purpose, pervading meekness, which gives it all 
its title to respect. 

It is worthy of special remark, that without this 
moral energy, resisting passion and impulse, our ten- 
derest attachments degenerate more or less into weak- 
nesses and immoralities ; sometimes prompting us to 
sympathize with those whom we love, in their errors, 
prejudices, and evil passions ; sometimes inciting us 
to heap upon them injurious praises and indulgences ; 
sometimes urging us to wrong or neglect others, that 
we may the more enjoy or serve our favorites; and 
sometimes poisoning our breasts with jealousy or envy, 
because our affection is not returned with equal 
warmth. The principle of love, whether exercised 
towards our relatives or our country, whether manifest- 
ed in courtesy or compassion, can only become vir- 
tue, can only acquire purity, consistency, serenity, 
dignity, when imbued, swayed, cherished, enlarged 
by the power of a virtuous will, by a self-denying 



190 



DISCOURSE VL 



energy. It is Inward Force, power over ourselves, 
which is the beginning and the end of virtue. 

What I have now said of the kind affections is 
equally true of the religious ones. These have 
virtue in them, only as far as they are imbued 
with self-denying strength. I know that multitudes 
place religion in feeling. Ardent sensibility is the 
measure of piety. He who is wrought up by preach- 
ing or sympathy into extraordinary fervor, is a saint ; 
and the less he governs himself in his piety, the more 
he is looked upon as inspired. But I know of no re- 
ligion, which has moral worth, oris acceptable to God, 
but that which grows from and is nourished by our 
own spiritual, self-denying energy. Emotion towards 
God, springing up without our own thought or care, 
grateful feelings at the reception of signal benefits, the 
swelling of the soul at the sight of nature, tenderness 
awakened by descriptions of the love and cross of 
Christ, these, though showing high capacities, though 
means and materials of piety, are not of themselves 
acceptable religion. The religious character which 
has true virtue, and which is built upon a rock, is that 
which has been deliberately and resolutely adopted and 
cherished, as our highest duty, and as the friend 
and strength ener of all other duties ; and which 
we have watched over and confirmed by suppressing 
inconsistent desires and passions, by warring against 
selfishness and the love of the world. 

There is one fact very decisive on this subject. It 
is not uncommon to see people with strong religious 
feeling, who are not made better by it; who at church 
or in other meetings are moved perhaps to tears, but 



DISCOURSE VI. 



191 



who make no progress in self-government or charity, 
and who gain nothing of elevation of mind in their 
common feelings and transactions. They take pleas- 
ure in religious excitement, just as others delight to be 
interested by a fiction or a play. They invite these 
emotions because they suppose them to aid or ensure 
salvation, and soon relapse into their ordinary sordid- 
ness or other besetting infirmities. Now to give the 
name of Religion to this mockery is the surest way to 
dishonor it. True religion is not mere emotion, is not 
something communicated to us without our own moral 
effort. It involves much self-denial. Its great character- 
istic is, not feeling, but the subjection of our wills, 
desires habits, lives, to the will of God, from a convic- 
tion that what he wills is the perfection of virtue, and 
the true happiness of our nature. In genuine piety the 
mind chooses, as its supreme good, the moral excel- 
lence enjoined by its Author, and resolutely renounces 
whatever would sully this divine image, and so 
disturb its communion with God. This religion, 
though its essence be not emotion, will gradually 
gather and issue in a sensibility, deeper, intenser, 
more glowing, than the blind enthusiast ever felt ; and 
then only does it manifest itself it its perfect form, 
when, through a self-denying and self-purifying power, 
it rises to an overflowing love, gratitude, and joy tow- 
ards the Universal Father. 

In insisting on the great principle, that religion, or 
virtue, consists in strength of moral purpose, in the 
soul's resolute determination of itself to duty, I am 
satisfied that I express a truth, which has a witness 
and confirmation in the breast of every reflecting man. 



192 



DISCOURSE t L 



We all of us, feel that virtue is not something adopted 
from necessity, something to which feeling impels us. 
something which comes to us from constitution, cr 
accident, or outward condition : but that it has its 
origin in our moral freedom, that it consists in moral 
energy ; and accordingly we all measure virtue by the 
trials and difficulties which it overcomes, for these 
are the tests and measures of the force with which the 
soul adopts it. Every one of us. who has adhered 
to duty, when duty brought no recompense but the 
conviction of well-doing, who has faced the perils of 
a good but persecuted cause with unshrinking courage, 
who has been conscious of an inward triumph over 
temptation, conscious of having put down bad motives 
and exalted good ones in his own breast, must remem- 
ber the clear, strong, authentic voice, the accents of 
peculiar encouragement and joy, with which, the in- 
ward judge has at such seasons pronounced its approv- 
ing sentence. This experience is universal, and 
it is the voice of nature and of God, in confirmation 
of the great truth of this discourse. 

I fear, that the importance of strength in the 
Christian character has been in some degree obscured, 
by the habit of calling certain Christian graces of singu- 
lar worth, by the name of passive virtues. This name 
has been given to humility, patience, resignation ; and 
I fear, that the phrase has led some to regard these noble 
qualities as allied to inaction, as wanting energy and 
determination. Now the truth is, that the mind never 
puts forth greater power over itself, than when, in 
great trials, it yields up calmly its desires, affections, 
interests to God. There are seasons, when to be still 



DISCOURSE VI. 



193 



demands immeasurably higher strength than to act. 
Composure is often the highest result of power. Think 
you it demands no power to calm the stormy 
elements of passion , to moderate the vehemence of 
desire, to throw off the load of dejection, to suppress 
every repining thought, when the dearest hopes are 
withered, and to turn the wounded spirit from danger- 
ous reveries and wasting grief, to the quiet discharge 
of ordinary duties? Is there no power put forth, when 
a man, stripped of his property, of the fruits of a life's 
labors, quells discontent and gloomy forebodings, and 
serenely and patiently returns to the tasks which Prov- 
idence assigns ? I doubt not, that the all-seeing eye of 
God sometimes discerns the sublimest human energy 
under a form and countenance, which by their compo- 
sure and tranquillity indicate to the human spectator 
only passive virtues. 

The doctrine of this discourse is in every view in- 
teresting. To me it goes further than all others to 
explain the present state. If moral strength, if in- 
ward power in the choice and practice of duty, con- 
stitute excellence and happiness, then I see why we 
are placed in a world of obstructions, perils, hard- 
ships, why duty is so often a " narrow way/ 3 why 
the warfare of the passions with conscience is so sub- 
tle and unceasing ; why within and without us are so 
many foes to rectitude ; for this is the very state to 
call forth and to build up moral force. In a world 
where duty and inclination should perfectly agree, 
we should indeed never err, but the living power 
of virtue could not be developed. Do not complain, 
then, of life's trials. Through these you may gain 

17 



194 



DISCOURSE VI. 



incomparably higher good, than indulgence and ease. 
This view reveals to us the impartial goodness of God 
in the variety of human conditions. We sometimes 
see individuals, whose peculiar trials are thought 
to make their existence to them an evil. But among 
such may be found the most favored children of God. 
If there be a man on earth to be envied, it is he, 
who, amidst the sharpest assaults from his own 
passions, from fortune, from society, never falters 
in his allegiance to God and the inward moni- 
tor. So peculiar is the excellence of this moral 
strength, that I believe the Creator regards one 
being who puts it forth, with greater complacency than 
he would look on a world of beings, innocent and 
harmless, through the necessity of constitution. I 
know not, that human wisdom has arrived at a juster 
or higher view of the present state, than that it is in- 
tended to call forth power by obstruction, the power 
of intellect by the difficulties of knowledge, the power 
of conscience and virtue by temptation, allurement, 
pleasure, pain, and the alternations of prosperous and 
adverse life. When I see a man holding faster his 
uprightness in proportion as it is assailed, fortifying 
his religious trust in proportion as Providence is ob- 
scure; hoping in the ultimate triumphs of virtue, 
more surely in proportion to its present afflictions ; 
cherishing philanthropy amidst the discouraging ex- 
perience of wen's unkindness and unthankfulness ; 
extending to others a sympathy which his own suffer- 
ings need, but cannot obtain ; growing milder and 
gentler amidst what tends to exasperate and harden ; 
and through inward principle converting the very 



DISCOURSE VI. 



195 



incitements to evil into the occasions of a victorious 
virtue, — I see an explanation, and a noble explana- 
tion, of the present state. I see a good produced, 
so transcendent in its nature, as to justify all the 
evil and suffering, under which it grows up. I 
should think the formation of a few such minds 
worth all the apparatus of the present world. 
I should say, that this earth, with its continents 
and oceans, its seasons and harvests, and its 
successive generations, was a work worthy of God, 
even were it to accomplish no other end than the 
training and manifestation of the illustrious characters 
which are scattered through history. And when I 
consider, how small a portion of human virtue is re- 
corded by history, how superior in dignity, as well 
as in number, are the unnoticed, unhonored saints and 
heroes of domestic and humble life, I see a light 
thrown over the present state which more than recon- 
ciles me to all its evils. 

The views given in this discourse of the importance 
of moral power, manifested in great trials, may be 
employed to shed a glorious and perhaps a new light 
on the character and cross of Christ. But this topic 
can now be only suggested to your private meditation. 
There is, however, one practical application of our 
subject, which may be made in a few words, and 
which I cannot omit. I wish to ask the young, who 
hear me, and especially of my own sex, to use the 
views now offered in judging and forming their char- 
acters. Young man, remember that the only test of 
goodness, virtue, is moral strength, self-denying ener- 
gy. You have generous and honorable feelings, you 



196 



DISCOURSE VI. 



scorn mean actions, your heart beats quick at the sight 
or hearing of courageous, disinterested deeds, and all 
these are interesting qualities ; but, remember, they are 
the gifts of nature, the endowments of your susceptible 
age. They are not virtue. God and the inward moni- 
tor ask for more. The question is, Do you strive to 
confirm, into permanent principles, the generous sensi- 
bilities of the heart ? Are you watchful to suppress the 
impetuous emotions, the resentments, the selfish pas- 
sionateness, which are warring against your honorable 
feelings ? Especially do you subject to your moral 
and religious convictions, the love of pleasure, the ap- 
petites, the passions, which form the great trials of 
youthful virtue ? Here is the field of conflict to which 
youth is summoned. Trust not to occasional impulses 
of benevolence, to constitutional courage, frankness, 
kindness, if you surrender yourselves basely to 
the temptations of your age. No man w r ho has 
made any observation of life, but will tell you how 
often he has seen the promise of youth blasted ; intel- 
lect, genius, honorable feeling, kind affection, overpow- 
ered and almost extinguished, through the want of 
moral strength, through a tame yielding to pleas- 
ure and the passions. Place no trust in your good 
propensities, unless these are fortified, and upheld, and 
improved by moral energy and self-control. — To all 
of us, in truth, the same lesson comes. If any man 
will be Christ's disciple, sincerely good, and worthy 
to be named among the friends of virtue, if he will 
have inward peace and the consciousness of progress 
towards Heaven, he must deny himself, he must take 
the cross, and follow in the renunciation of every gain 
and pleasure inconsistent with the will of God. 



DISCOURSE VII. 



1 PETER ii. 21. 

CHRIST ALSO SUFFERED FOR US, LEAVING US AN EXAM- 
PLE, THAT YE SHOULD FOLLOW HIS STEPS. 

The example of Jesus is our topic. To incite you 
to follow it, is the aim of this discourse. Christ came 
to give us a religion, — but this is not all. By a wise 
and beautiful ordination of Providence, he was sent 
to show forth his religion in himself. He did not come to 
sit in a hall of legislation, and from some commanding 
eminence to pronounce laws and promises. He is not 
a mere channel, though which certain communications 
are made from God ; not a mere messenger, appointed 
to utter the words which he had heard, and then to dis- 
appear, and to sustain no further connexion with his 
message. He came not only to teach with his lips, 
but to be a living manifestation of his religion, — to be, 
in an important sense, the religion itself. 

This is a peculiarity worthy of attention. Christianity 
is not a mere code of laws, not an abstract system, such 
as theologians frame. It is a living, embodied religion. 
It comes to us in a human form ; it offers itself to our 
eyes as well as ears ; it breathes, it moves in our sight. 
It is more than precept ; it is example and action. 
17* 



193 



DISCOURSE VII. 



The importance of example, who does not understand ? 
How much do most of us suffer from the presence, con- 
versation, spirit, of men of low minds, by whom we 
are surrounded. The temptation is strong to take, as our 
standard, the average character of the society in which 
we live, and to satisfy ourselves with decencies and 
attainments which secure to us among the multitude 
the name of respectable men. On the other hand, there 
is a pow r er (have you not felt it?) in the presence, 
conversation, and example of a man of strong princi- 
ple and magnanimity, to lift us, at least for the moment, 
from our vulgar and tame habits of thought, and to 
kindle some generous aspirations after the excel- 
lence which we were made to attain. I hardly 
need say to you, that it is impossible to place ourselves 
under any influence of this nature so quickening as the 
example of Jesus. This introduces us to the highest 
order of virtues. This is fitted to awaken the whole 
mind. Nothing has equal power to neutralize the 
coarse, selfish, and sensual influences, amidst which we 
are plunged, to refine our conception of duty, and to 
reveal to us the perfection on which our hopes and 
most strenuous desires should habitually fasten. 

There is one cause, which has done much to defeat 
this good influence of Christ's character and example, 
and which ought to be exposed. It is this. Multi- 
tudes, I am afraid great multitudes, think of Jesus as 
a being to be admired, rather than approached, They 
have some vague conceptions of a glory in his nature 
and character which makes it presumption to think of 
proposing him as their standard. He is thrown so far 
from them, that he does them little good. Many feel, 



DISCOURSE VII. 



199 



that a close resemblance to Jesus Christ is not to be 
expected ; that this, like many other topics, may serve 
for declamation in the pulpit, but is utterly incapable of 
being reduced to practice. I think I am touching here 
an error, which exerts a blighting influence on not a 
few minds. Until men think of the religion and char- 
acter of Christ as truly applicable to them, as intended 
to be brought into continual operation, as what they 
must incorporate with their whole spiritual nature, they 
will derive little good from Christ. Men think indeed to 
honor Jesus, when they place him so high as to dis- 
courage all effort to approach him. They really de- 
grade him. They do not understand his character ; 
they throw a glare over it, which hides its true features. 
This vague admiration is the poorest tribute which 
they ean pay him. 

The manner in which Jesus Christ is conceived and 
spoken of by many, reminds me of what is often seen 
in Catholic countries, where a superstitious priesthood 
and people imagine that they honor the Virgin Mary 
by loading her image with sparkling jewels and the 
gaudiest attire. A Protestant of an uncorrupted taste 
is at first shocked, as if there were something like profa- 
nation in thus decking out, as for a theatre, the meek, 
modest, gentle, pure, and tender mother of Jesus. It 
seems to me that something of the same superstition 
is seen in the indefinite epithets of admiration heaped 
upon Jesus ; and the effect is, that the mild and simple 
beauty of his character is not seen. Its sublimity, 
which had nothing gaudy or dazzling, which was 
plain and unaffected, is not felt, and its suitable- 
ness as an example to mankind is discredited or de- 
nied. 

j 



200 



DISCOURSE VII. 



I wish, in this discourse, to prevent the discouraging 
influence of the greatness of Jesus Christ, to show that, 
however exalted, he is not placed beyond the reach of 
our sympathy and imitation. 

I begin with the general observation, that real great- 
ness of character, greatness of the highest order, far 
from being repulsive and discouraging, is singularly 
accessible and imitable, and, instead of severing a being 
from others, fits him to be their friend and model. 
A man who stands apart from his race, who has few 
points of contact with other men, who has a style and 
manner which strike awe, and keep others far from 
him, whatever rank he may hold in his own and oth- 
ers' eyes, wants, after all, true grandeur of mind ; and 
the spirit of this remark, I think, may be extended be- 
yond men to higher orders of beings, to angels and to 
Jesus Christ. A great soul is known by its enlarged, 
strong, and tender sympathies. True elevation of mind 
does not take a being out of the circle of those who are 
below him, but binds him faster to them, and gives them 
advantages for a closer attachment and conformity to him, 

Greatness of character is a communicable attribute ; 
I should say, singularly communicable. It has nothing 
exclusive in its nature. It cannot be the monopoly of 
an individual, for it is the enlarged and generous action 
of faculties and affections which enter into and consti- 
tute all minds, I mean reason, conscience, and love, so 
that its elements exist in all. It is not a peculiar or 
exclusive knowledge, which can be shut up in one 
or a few understandings ; but the comprehension of 
great and universal truths, which are the proper 



DISCOURSE VII. 



201 



objects of every rational being. It is not a devotion 
to peculiar, exclusive objects, but the adoption of pub- 
lic interests, the consecration of the mind to the cause 
of virtue and happiness in the creation, that is, to 
the very cause which all intelligent beings are bound 
to espouse. Greatness is not a secret, solitary prin- 
ciple, working by itself and refusing participation, but 
frank and open-hearted, so large in its views, so liberal 
in its feelings, so expansive in its purposes, so benefi- 
cent in its labors, as naturally and necessarily to attract 
sympathy and cooperation. It is selfishness that 
repels men ; and true greatness has not a stronger 
characteristic than its freedom from every selfish 
taint. So far from being imprisoned in private inter- 
ests, it covets nothing which it may not impart. So 
far from being absorbed in its own distinctions, it dis- 
cerns nothing so quickly and joyfully as the capacities 
and pledges of greatness in others, and counts no labor 
so noble as to call forth noble sentiments, and the con- 
sciousness of a divine pow T er, in less improved minds. 

I know that those who call themselves great on earth, 
are apt to estrange themselves from their inferiors ; and 
the multitude, cast down by their high bearing, never 
think of proposing them as examples. But this springs 
wholly from the low conceptions of those whom we 
call the great, and shows a mixture of vulgarity of 
mind with their superior endowments. Genuine 
greatness is marked by simplicity, unostentatiousness, 
self-forgetfulness, a hearty interest in others, a feeling 
of brotherhood with the human family, and a respect 
for every intellectual and immortal being as capable of 
progress towards its own elevation. A superior mind, 



202 



DISCOURSE VII. 



enlightened and kindled by just views of God and of 
the creation, regards its gifts and powers as so many 
bonds of union with other beings, as given it, not to 
nourish self-elation, but to be employed for others, 
and still more to be communicated to others. Such 
greatness has no reserve, and especially no affected 
dignity of deportment. It is too conscious of its own 
power to need, and too benevolent to desire, to en- 
trench itself behind forms and ceremonies ; and when 
circumstances permit such a character to manifest 
itself to inferior beings, it is beyond all others the most 
winning, and most fitted to impart itself, or to call 
forth a kindred elevation of feeling. I know not in 
history an individual so easily comprehended as Jesus 
Christ, for nothing is so intelligible as sincere, disinter- 
ested love. I know not any being who is so fitted to take 
hold on all orders of minds ; and accordingly he drew 
after him the unenlightened, the publican, and the 
sinner. It is a sad mistake, then, that Jesus Christ 
is too great to allow us to think of intimacy with him, 
and to think of making him our standard, 

Xet me confirm this truth by another order of re- 
flections. You tell me, my hearers, that Jesus Christ 
is so high, that he cannot be your model ; 1 grant the 
exaltation of his character. I believe him to be a 
more than human being. In truth, all Christians so 
believe him. Those who suppose him not to have 
existed before his birth, do not regard him as a mere 
man, though so reproached. They always separate 
him by broad distinctions from other men. They con- 
sider him as enjoying a communion with God, and as 



DISCOURSE VII. 



203 



having received gifts, endowments, aids, lights from 
Him, granted to no other, and as having exhibited a 
spotless purity, which is the highest distinction of 
Heaven. All admit, and joyfully admit, that Jesus 
Christ, by his greatness and goodness, throws all other 
human attainments into obscurity. But on this ac- 
count he is not less a standard, nor is he to discourage 
us, but on the contrary to breathe into us a more ex- 
hilarating hope ; for though so far above us, he is still 
one of us, and is only an illustration of the capacities 
which we all possess. This is a great truth. Let 
me strive to unfold it. Perhaps I cannot better ex- 
press my views, than by saying, that I regard all 
minds as of one family. When we speak of higher 
orders of beings, of angels and archangels, we are 
apt to conceive of distinct kinds or races of beings, 
separated from us and from each other by impassable 
barriers. But it is not so. All minds are of one 
family. There is no such partition in the spiritual 
world as you see in the material. In material nature, 
you see wholly distinct classes of beings. A mineral 
is not a vegetable, and makes no approach to it ; these 
two great kingdoms of nature are divided by immeas- 
urable spaces. So, w 7 hen we look at different races 
of animals, though all partake of that mysterious 
property, life, yet what an immense and impassable 
distance is there between the insect and the lion. 
They have no bond of union, no possibility of commu- 
nication. During the lapse of ages, the animalcules 
which sport in the sunbeams a summer's day and 
then perish, have made no approximation to the 
king of the forests. But in the intellectual world 



204 



DISCOURSE VJL1. 



there are no such barriers. All minds are essentially 
of one origin, one nature, kindled from one divine 
flame, and are all tending to one centre, one happiness. 
This great truth, to us the greatest of truths, which 
lies at the foundation of all religion and of all hope, 
seems to me not only sustained by proofs which satisfy 
the reason, but to be one of the deep instincts of our 
nature. It mingles, unperceived, with all our worship 
of God, which uniformly takes for granted that he is 
a mind having thought, affection, and volition like our- 
selves. It runs through false religions ; and whilst, by 
its perversion, it has made them false, it has also 
given to them whatever purifying power they possess. 
But, passing over this instinct, which is felt more and 
more to be unerring, as the intellect is improved, this 
great truth of the unity or likeness of all minds seems 
to me demonstrable from this consideration, that Truth, 
the object and nutriment of mind, is one and immuta- 
ble, so that the whole family of intelligent beings must 
have the same views, the same motives, and the same 
general ends. For example, a truth of mathematics 
is not, a truth only in this world, a truth to our minds, 
but a truth every where, a truth in heaven, a truth 
to God, who has indeed framed his creation according 
to the laws of this universal science. So happiness 
and misery, which lie at the foundation of morals, must 
be to all intelligent beings what they are to us, the 
objects, one of desire and hope, and the other of aver- 
sion ; and who can doubt that virtue and vice are the 
same every where as on earth, that, in every commu- 
nity of beings, the mind which devotes itself to the 
general weal, must be more reverenced than a mind 



DISCOURSE VII. 



205 



which would subordinate the general interest to its 
own. Thus all souls are one in nature, approach one 
another, and have grounds and bonds of communion 
with one another, I am not only one of the human 
race : I am one of the great intellectual family of 
God. There is no spirit so exalted, with which I have 
not common thoughts and feelings. That conception, 
which I have gained, of One Universal Father, whose 
love is the fountain and centre of all things, is the 
dawn of the highest and most magnificent views 
in the universe ; and if I look up to this being with 
filial love, I have the spring and beginning of the no- 
blest sentiments and joys which are known in the uni- 
verse. No greatness therefore of a being separates 
me from him, or makes him unapproachable by me. 
The mind of Jesus Christ, my hearer, and your mind 
are of one family ; nor was there any thing in his, of 
which you have not the principle, the capacity, the 
promise in yourself. This is the very impression 
which he intends to give. He never held himself up 
as an inimitable and unapproachable being : but directly 
the reverse. He always spoke of himself as having 
come to communicate himself to others. He always 
invited men to believe on and adhere to him, 
that they might receive that very spirit, that pure, 
celestial spirit, by which he was himself actuated. 
"Follow 7 mef*is his lesson. The relation which he 
came to establish between himself and mankind, was 
not that of master and slave, but that of friends. 
He compares himself, in a spirit of divine be- 
nevolence, to a vine, which, you know, sends 
its own sap, that by which it is itself nourished, into 
18 



206 



DISCOURSE VII. 



all its branches. We read too these remarkable words 
in his prayer for his disciples, " I have given to them 
the glory thou gavest me ; " and I am persuaded that 
there is not a glory, a virtue, a power, a joy, possessed 
by Jesus Christ, to which his disciples will not succes- 
sively rise. In the spirit of these remarks, the Apos- 
tles say, " Let the same mind be in you which was 
also in Christ." 

I have said, that, all minds being of one family, the 
greatness of the mind of Christ is no discouragement 
to our adoption of him as our model. I now observe, 
that there is one attribute of mind, to which I have 
alluded, that should particularly animate us to 
propose to ourselves a sublime standard, as sublime 
as Jesus Christ. I refer to the principle of growth 
in human nature. We were made to grow. Our fac- 
ulties are germs, and given for an expansion, to which 
nothing authorizes as to set bounds. The soul bears 
the impress of illimitableness, in the thirst, the un- 
quenchable thirst, which it brings with it into being, 
for a power, knowledge, happiness, which it never gains, 
and which always carry it forward into futurity. The 
body soon reaches its limit. But intellect, affection, 
moral energy, in proportion to their growth, tend to 
further enlargement, and every acquisition is an im- 
pulse to something higher. When I consider this 
principle or capacity of the human soul, I cannot 
restrain the hope which it awakens. The partition- 
walls which imagination has reared between men and 
higher orders of beings vanish. I no longer see aught 
to prevent our becoming whatever was good and great 
in Jesus on earth. In truth I feel my utter inability 



DISCOURSE VII. 



207 



to conceive what a mind is to attain which is to ad- 
vance for ever. Add but that element, eternity, to man's 
progress, and the results of his existence surpass, not 
only human, but angelic thought. Give me this, and 
the future glory of the human mind becomes to me as 
incomprehensible as God himself. To encourage 
these thoughts and hopes, our Creator has set before us 
delightful exemplifications, even now, of this principle of 
growth both in outward nature and in the human 
mind. We meet them in nature. Suppose you were 
to carry a man, wholly unacquainted with vegetation, 
to the most majestic tree in our forests, and, whilst 
he was admiring its extent and proportions, suppose 
you should take from the earth at its root a little downy 
substance, which a breath might blow away, and say 
to him, That tree was once such a seed as this ; it 
was wrapt up here ; it once lived only within these 
delicate fibres, this narrow compass. With what in- 
credulous wonder would he regard you. And if by an 
effort of imagination, somewhat Oriental, we should 
suppose this little seed to be suddenly endued with 
thought, and to be told that it was one day to become 
this mighty tree, and to cast out branches, which 
would spread an equal shade, and wave with equal 
grace, and withstand the winter winds ; with what 
amazement may we suppose it to anticipate its future 
lot. Such growth we witness in nature. A nobler 
hope we Christians are to cherish ; and still more 
striking examples of the growth of mind are set before 
us in human history. We wonder, indeed, when we 
are told that, one day, we shall be as the angels of 
God. I apprehend that as great a wonder has been 



208 



DISCOURSE VII. 



realized already on the earth. I apprehend that the dis- 
tance between the mind of Newton and of a Hottentot 
may have been as great as between Newton and an angel. 
There is another view still more striking. This New- 
ton, who lifted his calm, sublime eye to the heavens, 
and read, among the planets and the stars, the great 
law of the material universe, was, forty or fifty years 
before, an infant, without one clear perception, and 
unable to distinguish his nurse's arm from the pillow 
on which he slept. Howard too, who, under the 
strength of an all-sacrificing benevolence, explored 
the depths of human suffering, was, forty or fifty years 
before, an infant wholly absorbed in himself, grasping 
at all he saw, and almost breaking his little heart with 
fits of passion, when the idlest toy was withheld, Has 
not man already traversed as wide a space as separates 
him from angels ? And why must he stop ? There 
is no extravagance in the boldest anticipation. We 
may truly become one with Christ, a partaker of that 
celestial mind. He is truly our brother, one of our 
family. Let us make him our constant model. 

I know not that the doctrine, now laid down, is 
liable but to one abuse. It may unduly excite suscepti- 
ble minds, and impel to a vehemence of hope and ex- 
ertion, unfavorable in the end to the very progress 
which is proposed. To such, I would say, Hasten to 
conform yourselves to Christ, but hasten according to 
the laws of your nature, As the body cannot, by the 
concentration of its whole strength into one bound, 
scale the height of a mountain, neither can the mind 
free every obstacle and achieve perfection by an agony 
of the will. Great effort is indeed necessary ; but 



DISCOURSE VII. 



209 



such as can be sustained, such as fits us for greater, 
such as will accumulate, not exhaust, our spiritual 
force. The soul may be overstrained as truly as the 
body, and it often is so, in seasons of extraordinary 
religious excitement ; and the consequence is, an in- 
jury to the constitution of the intellect and the heart, 
which a life may not be able to repair. I rest the 
hopes for human nature, which I have now expressed, 
on its principle of growth ; and growth, as you well 
know, is a gradual process, not a convulsive start, ac- 
complishing the work of years in a moment. All 
great attainments are gradual. As easily might a 
science be mastered by one struggle of thought, as 
sin be conquered by a spasm of remorse. Continuous, 
patient effort, guided by wise deliberation, is the true 
means of spiritual progress. In religion, as in com- 
mon life, mere force or vehemence will prove a fal- 
lacious substitute for the sobriety of wisdom. 

The doctrine which I have chiefly labored to main- 
tain in this discourse, that minds are all of one family, 
are all brethren, and may be more and more nearly 
united to God, seems to me to have been felt pecu- 
liarly by Jesus Christ ; and if I were to point out the 
distinction of his greatness, I should say it lay in this. 
He felt his superiority, but he never felt as if it sepa- 
rated him from mankind. He did not come among 
us, as some great men would visit a colliery, or any 
other resort of the ignorant and corrupt, with an air of 
greatness, feeling himself above us, and giving benefits 
as if it were an infinite condescension. He came and 
mingled with us as a friend and a brother. He saw 
18* 



210 



DISCOURSE VII. 



in every human being a mind which might wear his 
own brightest glory. He was severe only towards 
one class of men. and they were those who looked 
down on the multitude with contempt. Jesus respect- 
ed human nature ; he felt it to be his own. This 
was the greatness of Jesus Christ. He felt, as no 
other felt, a union of mind with the human race, — felt 
that all had a spark of that same intellectual and im- 
mortal flame which dwelt in himself. 

I insist on this view of his character, not only to 
encourage us to aspire after a likeness to Jesus ; I 
consider it as peculiarly fitted to call forth love towards 
him. If I regarded Jesus as an august stranger, belong- 
ing to an entirely different class of existence from my- 
self, having no common thoughts or feelings with me, 
and looking down upon me with only such a sympathy 
as I have with an inferior animal, I should regard 
him with a vague awe, but the immeasurable 
space between us would place him beyond friend- 
ship and affection. But when I feel, that all minds 
form one family, that I have the same nature with 
Jesus, and that he came to communicate to me, by his 
teaching, example, and intercession, his own mind, to 
bring me into communion with what was sublimest, 
purest, happiest in himself, then I can love him as I 
love no other being, excepting only Him who is the 
Father alike of Christ and of the Christian. With 
these views I feel, that, though ascended to Heaven, he 
is not gone beyond the reach of our hearts ; that he 
has now the same interest in mankind as when he en- 
tered their dwellings, sat at their tables, washed their 
feet ; and that there is no being so approachable, none 



DISCOURSE VII. 211 

with whom such unreserved intercourse is to be en- 
joyed in the future world, 

Believing, as I do, that I have now used no inflated 
language, but have spoken the words of truth and so- 
berness, I exhort you with calmness, but earnestness, 
to choose and adopt Jesus Christ as your example, 
with the whole energy of your wills. I exhort you to 
resolve on following him, not, as perhaps you have 
done, with a faint and yielding purpose, but with the 
full conviction, that your whole happiness is concen- 
trated in the force and constancy of your adherence 
to this celestial guide. My friends, there is no other 
happiness. Let not the false views of Christianity 
which prevail in the world, seduce you into the belief, 
that Christ can bless you in any other way than by 
assimilating you to his own virtue, than by breathing into 
you his own mind. Do not imagine that any faith 
or love towards Jesus can avail you, but that which 
quickens you to conform yourselves to his spotless 
purity and unconquerable rectitude. Settle it as an 
immovable truth, that neither in this world nor in the 
next can you be happy, but in proportion to the sanc- 
tity and elevation of your characters. Let no man 
imagine, that through the patronage or protection of 
Jesus Christ or any other being, he can find peace 
or any sincere good, but in the growth of an enlight- 
ened, firm, disinterested, holy mind. Expect no 
good from Jesus, any farther than you clothe your- 
selves with his excellence. He can impart to you 
nothing so precious as himself, as his own mind ; and 
believe me, my hearers, this mind may dwell in you. 
His sublimest virtues may be yours. Admit, welcome 



212 DISCOURSE VII. 

this great truth. Look up to the illustrious Son of 
God with the conviction, that you may become one 
with him in thought, in feeling, in power, in holiness. 
His character will become a blessing, just as far as it 
shall awaken in you this consciousness, this hope. 
The most lamentable skepticism on earth, and incom- 
parably the most common, is a skepticism as to the 
greatness, powers, and high destinies of human nature. 
In this greatness I desire to cherish an unwavering 
faith. Tell me not of the universal corruption of the 
race. Humanity has already, in not a few instances, 
borne conspicuously the likeness of Christ and God. 
The sun grows dim, the grandeur of outward nature 
shrinks, when compared with the spiritual energy of 
men, who, in the cause of truth, of God, of charity, 
have spurned all bribes of ease, pleasure, renown, and 
have withstood shame, want, persecution, torture, and 
the most dreaded forms of death. In such men I learn 
that the soul was made in God's image, and made to 
conform itself to the loveliness and greatness of his 
Son. 

My Friends, we may all approach Jesus Christ. For 
all of us he died, to leave us an example that we should 
follow his steps. By earnest purpose, by self-conflict, 
by watching and prayer, by faith in the Christian prom- 
ises, by those heavenly aids and illuminations, which 
he that seeketh shall find, we may all unite ourselves, 
in living bonds, to Christ, may love as he loved, may 
act from his principles, may suffer with his constancy, 
may enter into his purposes, may sympathize with 
his self-devotion to the cause of God and mankind, 
and, by likeness of spirit, may prepare ourselves to 
meet him as our everlasting friend. 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



PROVERBS xiv. 9. 

FOOLS MAKE A MOCK AT SIN. 

My aim in this discourse is simple, and may be 
expressed in a few words. I wish to guard you 
against thinking lightly of sin. No folly is so mon- 
strous, and yet our exposure to it is great. Breathing 
an atmosphere tainted with moral evil, seeing and 
hearing sin in our daily walks, we are in no small 
danger of overlooking its malignity. This malignity 
I would set before you with all plainness, believing that 
the effort which is needed to resist this enemy of our 
peace, is to be called forth by fixing on it our fre- 
quent and serious attention. 

I feel as if a difficulty lay at the very threshold of 
this discussion, which it is worth our while to remove. 
The word Sin, I apprehend, is to many obscure or 
not sufficiently plain. It is a word seldom used in 
common life. It belongs to theology and the pulpit. 
By not a few people, sin is supposed to be a property 
of our nature, born with us; and we sometimes hear 
of the child as being sinful, before it can have per- 
formed any action. From these and other causes, the 



214 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



word gives to many confused notions. Sin, in its true 
sense, is the violation of duty, and cannot, consequent- 
ly, exist, before conscience has begun to act, and be- 
fore power to obey it is unfolded. To sin is to resist 
our sense of right, to oppose known obligation, to 
cherish feelings, or commit deeds, which we know to 
be wrong. It is to withhold from God the reverence, 
gratitude, and obedience, which our own consciences 
pronounce to be due to that great and good Being. 
It is, to transgress those laws of equity, justice, can- 
dor, humanity, disinterestedness, which we all feel to 
belong and to answer to our various social relations. 
It is to yield ourselves to those appetites, which we 
know to be the inferior principles of our nature, to 
give the body a mastery over the mind, to sacrifice 
the intellect and heart to the senses, to surrender our- 
selves to ease and indulgence, or to prefer outward 
accumulation and power to strength and peace of con- 
science, to progress towards perfection. Such is sin. 
It is voluntary wrong-doing. Any gratification injuri- 
ous to ourselves is sin. Any act injurious to our 
neighbours is sin. Indifference to our Creator is sin. 
The transgression of any command which this excel- 
lent Being and rightful Soverign has given us, whether 
by conscience or revelation, is sin. So broad is this 
term. It is as extensive as duty. It is not some 
mysterious thing wrought into our souls at birth. It 
is not a theological subtilty. It is choosing and acting 
in opposition to our sense of right, to known obliga- 
tion. 

Now, according to the Scriptures, there is nothing 
so evil, so deformed, so ruinous as sin. All pain, 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



215 



poverty, contempt, affliction, ill success, are light and 
not to be named with it. To do wrong is more perni- 
cious than to incur all the calamities which nature or 
human malice can heap upon us. According to the 
Scriptures, I am not to fear those who would kill this 
body, and have nothing more that they can do. Such 
enemies are impotent compared with that sin, which 
draws down the displeasure of God, and draws after it 
misery and death to the soul. According to the Scrip- 
tures, I am to pluck out even a right eye, or cut off 
even a right arm, which would ensnare or seduce me 
into crime. The loss of the most important limbs and 
organs is nothing compared to the loss of innocence. 
Such you know is the whole strain of Scripture. Sin, 
violated duty, the evil of the heart, this is the only 
evil of which Scripture takes account. It was from 
this that Christ came to redeem us. It is to purify us from 
this stain, to set us free from this yoke, that a new and 
supernatural agency was added to God's other means 
of promoting human happiness. 

It is the design of these representations of Scripture 
to lead us to connect with sin or wrong-doing the ideas 
of evil, wretchedness, and debasement, more strongly 
than with any thing else ; and this deep, deliberate 
conviction of the wrong and evil done to ourselves by 
sin is not simply a command of Christianity. It is not 
an arbitrary, positive precept, which rests solely on the 
word of the lawgiver, and of which no account can be 
given, but that he wills it, It is alike the dictate of 
natural and revealed religion, an injunction of consci- 
ence and reason, founded in our very souls, and con- 
firmed by constant experience. To regard sin, wrong- 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



doing, as the greatest of evils, is God's command, pro* 
claimed from within and without, from Heaven and 
earth ; and he, who does not hear it, has not learnt 
the truth on which his whole happiness rests. This 
1 propose to illustrate. 

]. If we look within, we find in our very nature a 
testimony to the doctrine, that sin is the chief of evils, 
a testimony which, however slighted or smothered, will 
be recognised, I think, by every one who hears me. 
To understand this truth better, it may be useful to in- 
quire into and compare the different kinds of evil. 
Evil has various forms, but these may all be reduced 
to two great divisions, called by philosophers natural 
and moral. By the first is meant the pain or suffering 
which springs from outward condition and events, or 
from causes independent of the will. The latter, that 
is, moral evil, belongs to character and conduct, and is 
commonly expressed by the words sin, vice, trans- 
gression of the rule of right. Now I say, that there 
is no man, unless he be singularly hardened and an 
exception to his race, who, if these two classes of 
divisions of evil should be clearly and fully presented 
him in moments of calm and deliberate thinking, would 
not feel, through the very constitution of his mind, that 
sin or vice is worse and more to be dreaded than pain. 
I am willing to take from among you, the individual, 
who has studied least the great questions of morality 
and religion, whose mind has grown up with least dis- 
cipline. If I place before such a hearer two examples 
in strong contrast, one of a man gaining great proper- 
ty by an atrocious crime, and another exposing him- 
self to great suffering through a resolute purpose of 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



217 



duty, will he not tell me at once, from a deep moral 
sentiment, which leaves not a doubt on his mind, that 
the last has chosen the better part, that he is more to be 
envied than the first ? On these great questions, What 
is the chief good ? and What the chief evil ? we are in- 
structed by our own nature. An inward voice has 
told men, even in heathen countries, that excellence 
of character is the supreme good, and that baseness 
of soul and of action involves something worse than suf- 
fering. We have all of us, at some periods of life, had 
the same conviction ; and these have been the peri- 
ods when the mind has been healthiest, clearest, least 
perturbed by passion. Is there any one here, who 
does not feel, that what the divine faculty of conscience 
enjoins as right, has stronger claims upon him than 
what is recommended as merely agreeable or advan- 
tageous ; that duty is something more sacred than in- 
terest or pleasure : that virtue is a good of a higher 
order than gratification ; that crime is something 
worse than outward loss ? What means the admiration 
with which we follow the conscientious and disinter- 
ested man, and which grows strong in proportion to 
his sacrifices to duty ? Is it not the testimony of our 
whole souls to the truth and greatness of the good he 
has chosen ? What means the feeling of abhorrence 
which we cannot repress, if we would, towards him, 
who, by abusing confidence, trampling on weakness, or 
hardening himself against the appeals of mercy, has 
grown rich or great? Do we think that such a man 
has made a good bargain in bartering principle for 
wealth ? Is prosperous fortune a balance for vice ? 
19 

# 



218 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



In our deliberate moments, is there not a voice which 
pronounces his craft folly, and his success misery r 

And, to come nearer home, what conviction is it, 
which springs up most spontaneously in our more 
reflecting moments, when we look back without pas- 
sion on our own lives? Can vice stand that calm 
look ? Is there a single wrong act, which we would 
not then rejoice to expunge from the unalterable 
records of our deeds ? Do we ever congratulate 
ourselves on having despised the inward monitor, or 
revolted against God? To what portions of our history 
do we return most joyfully ? Are they those in 
which we gained the world and lost the soul, in which 
temptation mastered cur principles, which levity and 
sloth made a blank, or which a selfish and unprinci- 
pled activity made worse than a blank, in our exis- 
tence ? or are they those in which we suffered, but 
were true to conscience, in which we denied our- 
selves for duty, and sacrificed success through unwa- 
vering rectitude ? In these moments of calm recollec- 
tion, do not the very trangressions at which perhaps 
we once mocked, and which promised unmixed joy, 
recur to awaken shame and remorse ? And do not 
shame and remorse involve a consciousness, that we 
have sunk beneath our proper good? that our high- 
est nature, what constitutes our true self, has been 
sacrificed to low interests and pursuits ? I make these 
appeals confidently. I think my questions can receive 
but one answer. Now these convictions and emotions, 
with which we witness moral evil in others, or recollect 
ic in ourselves, these feelings towards guilt, which mere 
pain and suffering never excite, and which manifest 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



219 



themselves with more or less distinctness in all nations 
and all stages of society, these inward attestations that 
sin, wrong-doing, is a peculiar evil, for which no out- 
ward good can give adequate compensation, surely 
these deserve to be regarded as the voice of na- 
ture, the voice of God. They are accompanied with a 
peculiar consciousness of truth. They are felt to be 
our ornament and defence. Thus our nature teaches 
the doctrine of Christianity, that sin or moral evil 
ought of all evils to inspire most abhorrence and 
fear. 

Our first argument has been drawn from Sentiment, 
from deep and almost instinctive feeling, from the hand- 
writing of the Creator on the soul. Our next may be 
drawn from Experience. We have said, that even when 
sin or wrong-doing is prosperous, and duty brings suffer- 
ing, we feel that the suffering is a less evil than sin. 
I now add, in the second place, that sin, though it some- 
times prospers, and never meets its full retribution on 
earth, yet, on the whole, produces more present suf- 
fering than all things else ; so that experience warns us 
against sin or wrong-doing as the chief evil we can incur. 
Whence come the sorest diseases and acutest bodily 
pains? Come they not from the lusts warring in our 
members, from criminal excess ? What chieflv generates 
poverty and its worst sufferings ? Is it not to evils of 
character, to the want of self-denying virtue, that we 
must ascribe chiefly the evils of our outward condition ? 
The pages of history, how is it that they are so dark 
and sad ? Is it not, that they are stained with crime ? 
If we penetrate into private life, what spreads mostmis- 



220 DISCOURSE VIII. 

ery through our homes? Is it sickness, or selfishness? 
Is it want of outward comforts, or want of inward disci- 
pline, of the spirit of love ? What more do we need to 
bring back Eden's happiness, than Eden's sinlessness ? 
How light a burden would be life's necessary ills, were 
they net aided by the crushing weight of our own and 
others' faults and crimes ? How fast would human woe 
vanish, were human selfishness, sensuality, injustice, 
pride, impiety, to yield to the pure and benign influ- 
ences of Christian truth ? How many of us know, that 
the sharpest pains we have ever suffered, have been the 
wounds of pride, the paroxysms of passion, the stings 
of remorse ; and where this is not the case, who of us, 
if he were to know his own soul, would not see, thai 
the daily restlessness of life, the wearing uneasiness of 
the mind, which, as a whole, brings more suffering than 
acute pains, is altogether the result of undisciplined 
passions, of neglect or disobedience of God ? Our dis- 
contents and anxieties have their origin in moral eviL 
The lines of suffering on almost every human counte- 
nance, have been deepened, if not traced there, by un- 
faithfulness to conscience, by departures from duty* 
To do wrong is the surest way to bring suffering ; 
no wrong deed ever failed to bring it. Those sins 
which are followed by no palpable pain, are yet terribly 
avenged, even in this life. They abridge our capacity 
of happiness, impair our relish for innocent pleasure, and 
increase our sensibility to suffering. They spoil us of 
the armour of a pure conscience, and of trust in God, 
without which we are naked, amidst hosts of foes, and 
are vulnerable by all the changes of life, Thus, to do 
wrong is to inflict the surest injury on our own peace. 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



221 



No enemy can do us equal harm with what we do our- 
selves, whenever or however we violate any moral or 
religious obligation. 

I have time but for one more view of moral evil or 
sin, showing that it is truly the greatest evil. It is 
this. The miseries of disobedience to conscience and 
God are not exhausted in this life. Sin deserves, 
calls for, and will bring down Future, greater misery. 
This Christianity teaches, and this nature teaches. 
Retribution is not a new doctrine, brought by Christ 
into the world. Though darkened and corrupted, it 
was spread every where before he came. It carried 
alarm to rude nations, which nothing on earth could 
terrify. It mixed with all the false religions of anti- 
quity, and it finds a response now in every mind, not 
perverted by sophistry. That we shall carry with us 
into the future world our present minds, and that a 
character, formed in opposition to our highest faculties 
and to the will of God, will produce suffering in our 
future being, these are truths, in which revelation, rea- 
son, and conscience remarkably conspire. 

I know, indeed, that this doctrine is sometimes ques- 
tioned. It is maintained by some among us, that pun- 
ishment is confined to the present state ; that in chang- 
ing worlds we shall change our characters : that moral 
evil is to be buried with the body in the grave. As 
this opinion is spread industriously, and as it tends to 
diminish the dread of sin, it deserves some notice. 
To my mind, a more irrational doctrine was never 
broached. — In the first place, it contradicts all our 
experience of the nature and laws of the mind. There 
19* 



•222 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



is nothing more striking in the mind, than the connex- 
ion of its successive states. Our present knowledge, 
thoughts, feelings, characters, are the results of former 
impressions, passions, and pursuits. We are this mo- 
ment what the past has made us ; and to suppose, that, 
at death, the influences of our whole past course are 
to cease on our minds, and that a character is to spring 
up altogether at war with what has preceded it, is to 
suppose the most important law or principle of the 
mind to be violated, is to destroy all analogy between 
the present and future, and to substitute for experi- 
ence the wildest dreams of fancy. In truth, such a 
sudden revolution in the character, as is here supposed, 
seems to destroy a man's identity. The individual 
thus transformed, can hardly seem to himself or to 
others the same being. It is equivalent to the crea- 
tion of a new soul. 

Let me next ask, what fact can be adduced in proof 
or illustration of the power ascribed to death, of chang- 
ing and purifying the mind. What is death ? It is 
the dissolution of certain limbs and organs by which 
the soul now acts. But these, however closely con- 
nected with the mind, are entirely distinct from its 
powers, from thought and will, from conscience and 
affection. Why should the last grow pure from the 
dissolution of the first ? Why shall the mind put on 
a new character, by laying aside the gross instruments 
through which it new operates ? At death, the hands, 
the feet, the eye, and the ear perish. But they 
often perish during life; and does character change 
with them ? It is true that our animal appetites are 
weakened and sometimes destroyed by the decay of 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



223 



the bodily organs on which they depend. But our 
deeper principles of action, and the moral complex- 
ion of the mind, are not therefore reversed. It often 
happens, that the sensualist, broken down by disease, 
which excess has induced, comes to loathe the luxu- 
ries to which he was once enslaved : but do his sel- 
fishness, his low habits of thought, his insensibility to 
God, decline and perish with his animal desires ? Lop 
off the criminal's hands ; does the disposition to do 
mischief vanish with them ? When the feet mor- 
tify, do we see a corresponding mortification of the 
will to go astray ? The loss of sight or hearing is 
a partial death ; but is a single vice plucked from the 
mind, or one of its strong passions palsied, by this de- 
struction of its chief corporeal instruments ? 

Again ; the idea that by dying, or changing worlds, 
a man may be made better or virtuous, shows an ig- 
norance of the nature of moral goodness or virtue. 
This belongs to free beings ; it supposes moral lib- 
erty. A man cannot be made virtuous, as an instru- 
ment may be put in tune, by a foreign hand, by an 
outward force. Virtue is that to which the man him- 
self contributes. It is the fruit of exertion. It sup- 
poses conquest of temptation. It cannot be given 
from abroad to one who has wasted life, or steeped 
himself in crime. To suppose moral goodness breathed 
from abroad into the guilty mind, just as health may 
be imparted to a sick body, is to overlook the distinc- 
tion between corporeal and intellectual natures, and 
to degrade a free being into a machine. 

I will only add, that to suppose no connexion to 
exist between the present and the future character, is 



224 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



to take away the use of the present state. Why are 
we placed in a state of discipline, exposed to tempta- 
tion, encompassedjwith suffering, if, without discipline, 
and by a sovereign act of Omnipotence, we are all of 
us, be our present characters what they may, soon 
and suddenly to be made perfect in virtue, and 
perfect in happiness ? 

Let us not listen for a moment to a doctrine so 
irrational, as that our present characters do not follow 
us into a future world. If we are to live again, let 
us settle it as a sure fact, that we shall carry with us 
our present minds, such as we now make them ; that we 
shall reap good or ill according to their improvement or 
corruption; and, of consequence, that every act, which 
affects character, will reach in its influence beyond 
the grave, and have a bearing on our future weal or 
woe. We are now framing our future lot. He who 
does a bad deed says, more strongly than words can 
otter, " I cast away a portion of future good, I resolve 
on future pain. 55 

I proceed now to an important and solemn remark, 
in illustration of the evil of sin. It is plainly implied 
in Scripture, that we shall suffer much more from sin, 
evil tempers, irreligion, in the future world, than we 
suffer here. This is one main distinction between 
the two states. In the present world, sin does indeed 
bring with it many pains, but not full or exact retribu- 
tion, and sometimes it seems crowned w T ith prosperity ; 
and the cause of this is obvious. The present world 
is a state for the formation of character. It is meant 
to be a state of trial, where we are to act freely, to 
have opportunities of wrong as well as right action, 



DISCOURSE VIII. 225 

and to become virtuous amidst temptation. Now 
such a purpose requires, that sin, or wrong-doing, 
should not regularly and infallibly produce its full 
and immediate punishment. For suppose, my hear- 
ers, that at the very instant of a bad purpose or 
a bad deed, a sore and awful penalty were unfailingly 
to light upon you : would this be consistent with 
trial ? would you have moral freedom ? would 
you not live under compulsion ? Who would do 
wrong, if judgment were to come like lightning after 
every evil deed ? In such a world, fear would sus- 
pend our liberty and supersede conscience. Accor- 
dingly sin, though, as we have seen, it produces great 
misery, is 'still . left to compass many of its objects, 
often to prosper, often to be gain. Vice, bad as it is, 
has often many pleasures in its train, The worst men 
partake, equally with the good, the light of the sun, 
the rain, the harvest, the accommodations and in> 
provements of. civilized life, and sometimes accumu- 
late more largely outward goods. And thus sin has 
its pleasures, and escapes many of its natural and 
proper fruits. We live in a world where, if we please, 
we may forget ourselves, may delude ourselves, may 
intoxicate our minds with false hopes, and may find 
for a time a deceitful joy in an evil course. In this 
respect the future will differ from the present world. 
After death, character will produce its full effect. 
According to the Scriptures, the color of our future 
existence will be wholly determined by the habits and 
principles which we carry into it. The circumstances 
which in this life prevent vice, sin, wrong-doing, from 
inflicting pain, will not operate hereafter. There the 



226 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



evil mind will be exposed to its own terrible agency, 
and nothing, nothing will interfere between the trans- 
gressor and his own awakened conscience. I ask you 
to pause and weigh this distinction between the pres- 
ent and future. In the present life, we have, as I 
have said, the means of escaping, amusing, and forget- 
ting ourselves. Once, in the course of every daily 
revolution of the sun, we all of us find refuge, and 
many a long refuge, in sleep ; and he who has lived 
without God, and in violation of his duty, hears not, 
for hours, a whisper of the monitor within. But sleep 
is a function of our present animal frame, and let not 
the trangressor anticipate this boon in the world of 
retribution before him. It may be, and he has rea- 
son to fear, that in that state repose will not weigh 
down his eyelids, that conscience will not slumber 
there, that night and day the same reproaching 
voice is to cry within, that unrepented sin will fasten 
with unrelaxing grasp on the ever-waking soul. 
What an immense change in condition would the 
removal of this single alleviation of suffering pro- 
duce. 

Again : in the present state how many pleasant 
sights, scenes, voices, motions, draw us from ourselves; 
and he who has done wrong, how easily may he for- 
get it, perhaps mock at it, under the bright light of 
this sun, on this fair earth, at the table of luxury, and 
amidst cheerful associates. In the state of retribution, 
he who has abused the present state, will find no such 
means of escaping the wages of sin. The precise 
mode in which such a man is to exist hereafter, I 
know not. But I know, that it will offer nothing to 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



227 



amuse him, to dissipate thought, to turn him away 
from himself ; nothing to which he can fly for refuge 
from the inward penalties of transgression. 

In the present life, I have said, the outward crea- 
tion, by its interesting objects, draws the evil man from 
himself. It seems to me probable, that, in the future, 
the whole creation will, through sin, be turned into a 
source of suffering, and will perpetually throw back 
the evil mind on its own transgressions, I can brief- 
ly state the reflections which lead to this anticipation. 
The Scriptures strongly imply, if not positively teach, 
that in the future life we shall exist in connexion with 
some material frame ; and the doctrine is sustained by 
reason ; for it can hardly be thought, that in a creation 
which is marked by gradual change and progress, we 
should make at once the mighty transition from our 
present state into a purely spiritual or unembodied exis- 
tence. Now in the present state we find, that the mind 
has an immense power over the body, and, when diseas- 
ed/often communicates disease to its sympathizing com- 
panion. I believe, that, in the future state, the mind 
will have this power of conforming its outward frame 
to itself, incomparably more than here. We must 
never forget, that, in that world, mind or character is 
to exert an all-powerful sway ; and accordingly, it is 
rational to believe, that the corrupt and deformed mind, 
which wants moral goodness or a spirit of concord 
with God and with the universe, will create for itself, 
as its fit dwelling, a deformed body, which will also 
want concord or harmony with all things around it. 
Suppose this to exist, and the whole creation which 



228 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



now amuses, may become an instrument of suffering, 
fixing the soul with a more harrowing consciousness 
on itself. You know that even now, in consequence 
of certain derangements of the nervous system, the 
beautiful light gives acute pain, and sounds, which 
once delighted us, become shrill and distressing. How 
often this excessive irritableness of the body has its 
origin in moral disorders, perhaps few of us suspect. 
I apprehend, indeed, that we should be all amaz- 
ed, were we to learn to w T hat extent the body is 
continually incapacitated for enjoyment, and made 
susceptible of suffering, by sins of the heart 
and life. That delicate part of our organization, on 
which sensibility, pain, and pleasure depend, is, I be- 
lieve, peculiarly alive to the touch of moral evil* 
How easily, then, may the mind hereafter frame the fu- 
ture body according to itself, so that, in proportion to its 
vice, it will receive, through its organs and senses, im- 
pressions of gloom, which it will feel to be the natural 
productions of its own depravity, and which will in this 
way give a terrible energy to conscience ! For my- 
self, I see no need of a local hell for the sinner after 
death. When I reflect, how, in the present world, a 
guilty mind has power to deform the countenance, to 
undermine health, to poison pleasure, to darken the 
fairest scenes of nature, to turn prosperity into a 
curse, I can easily understand how, in the world to 
come, sin, working without obstruction according to 
its own nature, should spread the gloom of a dungeon 
over the whole creation, and, wherever it goes, should 
turn the universe into a hell. 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



229 



In these remarks I presume not to be the prophet 
of the future world. I only wish you to feel how 
terribly sin is hereafter to work its own misery, and 
how false and dangerous it is to argue from your 
present power of escaping its consequences, that 
you may escape them in the life to come. Let 
each of us be assured, that by abusing this world, 
we shall not earn a better. The Scriptures announce 
a state of more exact and rigorous retribution than 
the present. Let this truth sink into our hearts. 
It shows us, what I have aimed to establish, that to 
do wrong is to incur the greatest of calamities, that 
sin is the chief of evils. May I not say, that noth- 
ing else deserves the name ? No other evil will 
follow us beyond the grave. Poverty, disease, the 
world's scorn, the pain of bereaved affection, these 
cease at the grave. The purified spirit lays down 
there every burden. One and only one evil can be 
carried from this world to the next, and that is, the 
evil within us, moral evil, guilt, crime, ungoverned 
passion, the depraved mind, the memory of a wasted 
or ill-spent life, the character w T hich has grown up 
under neglect of God's voice in the soul and in his 
word. This, this will go with us, to stamp itself on 
our future frames, to darken our future being, to sep- 
arate us like an impassable gulf from our Creator 
and from pure and happy beings, to be as a consum- 
ing fire and an undying worm. 

I have spoken of the pains and penalties of moral 
evil, or of wrong-doing, in the world to come. How 
long they will endure, I know not. Whether they 
will issue in the reformation and happiness of the suf 
20 



230 



DISCOURSE VIII. 



ferer, or will terminate in the extinction of his con- 
scious being, is a question on which Scripture throws 
no clear light. Plausible arguments may be adduced 
in support of both these doctrines. On this and on 
other points revelation aims not to give precise in- 
formation, but to fix in us a deep impression, that 
great suffering awaits a disobedient, wasted, immor- 
al, irreligious life. To fasten this impression, to 
make it a deliberate and practical conviction, is more 
needful than to ascertain the mode or duration of future 
suffering. May the views this day given, lead us all 
to self-communion, and to new energy, watchfulness, 
and prayer against our sins. May they teach us, that 
to do wrong, to neglect or violate- any known duty, is of 
all evils the most fearful. Let every act, or feeling, 
or motive, which bears the brand of guilt, seem to 
us more terrible than the worst calamities of life. Let 
us dread it more than the agonies of the most painful 
death. 



DISCOURSE IX. 



2 TIMOTHY i. 10. 

OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, WHO HATH ABOLISHED 
DEATH, AND HATH BROUGHT LIFE AND IMMORTALITY 
TO LIGHT THROUGH THE GOSPEL. 

Immortality is the glorious discovery of Christianity. 
I say discovery, not because a future life was wholly un- 
known before Christ, but because it was so revealed by 
him as to become, to a considerable extent, a new doc- 
trine. Before Christ immortality was a conjecture, or 
a vague hope. Jesus, by his teaching and resurrection, 
has made it a certainty. Again, before Christ, a future 
life lent little aid to virtue. It was seized upon by the 
imagination and passions, and so perverted by them as 
often to minister to vice. In Christianity this doctrine 
is wholly turned to a moral use ; and the Future is re- 
vealed only to give motives, resolution, force, to self- 
conflict and to a holy life. 

My aim in this discourse is, to strengthen, if I may, 
your conviction of immortality ; and I have thought 
that I may do this by showing, that this great truth is 
also a dictate of nature ; that reason, though unable to 
establish it, yet accords with and adopts it ; that it is 
written alike in God's word and in the soul. It is plainly 



232 



DISCOURSE IX. 



rational to expect, that, if man was made for immortality, 
the marks of this destination will be found in his very 
constitution, and that these marks will grow stronger 
in proportion to the unfolding of his faculties. I would 
show that this expectation proves just, that the teach- 
ing of revelation, in regard to a future life, finds a 
strong response in our own nature. 

This topic is the more important, because to some 
men there seem to be appearances in nature unfavor- 
able to immortality. To many, the constant operation 
of decay in all the works of creation, the dissolution of 
all the forms of animal and vegetable nature, gives a 
feeling, as if destruction were the law to which we 
and all beings are subjected. 

It has often been said by the skeptic that the races 
or classes of being are alone perpetual, that all the indi- 
viduals which compose them are doomed to perish. 
Now I affirm, that the more we know of the Mind, the 
more we see reason to distinguish it from the ani- 
mal and vegetable races, which grow and decay around 
us ; and that in its very nature we see reason for exempt- 
ing it from the universal law of destruction. To this 
point, I now ask your attention. 

When we look round us on the earth, we do indeed 
see every thing changing, decaying, passing away ; 
and so inclined are we to reason from analogy or re- 
semblance, that it is not wonderful that the dissolution of 
all the organized forms of matter should seem to us 
to announce our own destruction. But we overlook 
the distinctions between matter and mind; and these 
are so immense as to justify the directly opposite con- 
clusion. Let me point out some of these distinctions. 



DISCOURSE IX. 



233 



1. When we look at the organized productions of 
nature, we see that they require only a limited time, 
and most of them a very short time, to reach their per- 
fection, and accomplish their end. Take, for example 
that noble production, a tree. Having reached a cer- 
tain height and borne leaves, flowers, and fruit, it has 
nothing more to do. Its powers are fully developed ; it 
has no hidden capacities, of which its buds and fruit 
are only the beginnings and pledges. Its design is 
fulfilled ; the principle of life within it can effect no 
more. Not so the mind. We can never say of this, 
as of the full grown tree in autumn, It has answered its 
end, it has done its work, its capacity is exhausted. 
On the contrary, the nature, powers, desires, and 
purposes of the mind are all undefined. We never 
feel, when a great intellect has risen to an original 
thought, or a vast discovery, that it has now accom- 
plished its whole purpose, reached its bound, and 
can yield no other or higher fruits. On the contrary 
our conviction of its resources is enlarged ; we dis- 
cern more its affinity to the inexhaustible intelligence 
of its Author. In every step of its progress we see a 
new impulse gained and the pledge of nobler acquire- 
ments. So when a pure and resolute mind has made 
some great sacrifice to truth and duty, has manifested 
its attachment to God and man in singular trials, we 
do not feel, as if the whole energy of virtuous prin- 
ciple were now put forth ; as if the measure of excellence 
were filled ; as if the maturest fruits were now borne, and 
henceforth the soul could only repeat itself. We 
feel, on the contrary, that virtue by illustrious efforts 
replenishes instead of wasting its life ; that the mind 
20* 



234 



DISCOURSE IX. 



by perseverance in well-doing, instead of sinking into 
a mechanical tameness, is able to conceive of higher 
duties, is armed for a nobler daring, and grows more 
efficient in charity. The mind, by going forward, does 
not reach insurmountable prison-walls, but learns more 
and more the boundlessness of its powers, and of 
the range for which it was created. 

Let me place this topic in another light, which may 
show, even more strongly, the contrast of the mind 
with the noblest productions of matter. My meaning 
may best be conveyed by reverting to the tree. We 
consider the tree as having answered its highest pur- 
pose, when it yields a particular fruit. We judge of 
its perfection by a fixed, positive, definite product. 
The mind, however, in proportion to its improve- 
ment, becomes conscious that its perfection consists 
not in fixed, prescribed effects, not in exact and de- 
fined attainments, but in an original, creative, uncon- 
finable energy, which yields new products, which car- 
ries it into new fields of thought and new efforts for 
religion and humanity. This truth indeed is so obvi- 
ous, that even the least improved may discern it. 
You all feel, that the most perfect mind is not that 
which works in a prescribed way, which thinks and 
acts according to prescribed rules, but that which has 
a spring of action in itself, which combines anew 
the knowledge received from other minds, which ex- 
plores its hidden and multiplied relations, and gives it 
forth in fresh and higher forms. The perfection of 
the tree, then, lies in a precise or definite product. 
That of the mind lies in an indefinite and boundless 
energy. The first implies limits. To set limits to 



DISCOURSE IX, 



235 



the mind would destroy that original power in which 
its perfection consists. Here then we observe a dis- 
tinction between material forms and the mind ; and 
from the destruction of the first, which, as we see, 
attain perfection and fulfill their purpose in a limited 
duration, we cannot argue to the destruction of the 
last, which plainly possesses the capacity of a pro- 
gress without end. 

2. We have pointed out one contrast between the 
mind and material forms. The latter, we have seen, 
by their nature have bounds. The tree in a short 
time, and by rising and spreading a short distance, ac- 
complishes its end. I now add, that the system of 
nature to which the tree belongs, requires that it 
should stop where it does. Were it to grow for ever, 
it would be an infinite mischief. A single plant, en- 
dued with the principle of unlimited expansion, would 
in the progress of centuries overshadow nations and 
exclude every other growth, would exhaust the earth's 
whole fertility. Material forms then must have nar- 
row bounds, and their usefulness requires that their 
life and growth should often be arrested even before 
reaching the limits prescribed by nature. But the 
indefinite expansion of the mind, instead of warring 
with and counteracting the system of creation, harmo- 
nizes with and perfects it. One tree, should it grow 
for ever, would exclude other forms of vegetable life. 
One mind, in proportion to its expansion, awakens and 
in a sense creates other minds. It multiplies, instead 
of exhausting, the nutriment which other understand- 
ings need. A mind, the more it has of intel- 



236 



DISCOURSE IX. 



lectual and moral life, the more it spreads life and 
power around it. It is an ever-enlarging source of 
thought and love. Let me here add, that the mind, 
by unlimited growth, not only yields a greater amount 
of good to other beings, but it produces continually 
new forms of good. This is an important distinction. 
Were the tree to spread indefinitely, it would abound 
more in fruit, but in fruit of the same kind ; and, by 
excluding every other growth, it would destroy the 
variety of products, which now contribute to health 
and enjoyment. But the mind, in its progress, is per- 
petually yielding new fruits, new forms of thought and 
virtue and sanctity. It always contains within itself 
the germs of higher influences than it has ever put 
forth, the buds of fruits which it has never borne. 
Thus the very reason which requires the limitation of 
material forms, I mean, the good of the whole system, 
seems to require the unlimited growth of mind. 

3. Another distinction between material forms and 
the mind is, that to the former destruction is no loss. 
They exist for others wholly, in no degree for them- 
selves ; and others only can sorrow for their fall. The 
mind on the contrary has a deep interest in its own 
existence. In this respect, indeed, it is distinguished 
from the animal as well as the vegetable. To the ani- 
mal, the past is a blank, and so is the future. The 
present is every thing. But to the mind the present 
is comparatively nothing. Its great sources of happi- 
ness are memory and hope. It has power over the 
past, not only the power of recalling it, but of turning 
to good all its experience, its errors and sufferings as 



DISCOURSE IX. 



well as its successes. It has power over the future, 
not only the power of anticipating it, but of bring- 
ing the present to bear upon it, and of sowing for it 
the seeds of a golden harvest. To a mind capable of 
thus connecting itself with all duration, of spreading 
itself through times past and to come, existence be- 
comes infinitely dear, and, what is most worthy of ob- 
servation, its interest in its own being increases with 
its progress in power and virtue. An improved mind 
understands the greatness of its own nature, and the 
worth of existence, as these cannot be understood by 
the unimproved. The thought of its own destruc- 
tion suggests to it an extent of ruin, which the 
latter cannot comprehend. The thought of such fac- 
ulties as reason, conscience, and moral will, being 
extinguished, — of powers, akin to the divine energy, 
being annihilated by their author, — of truth and vir- 
tue, those images of God, being blotted out, — of 
progress towards perfection being broken off almost 
at its beginning, — . this is a thought fitted to overwhelm 
a mind, in which the consciousness of its own spiritual 
nature is in a good degree unfolded. In other words, 
the more the mind is true to itself and to God, the 
more it clings to existence, the more it shrinks from 
extinction as an infinite loss. AVould not its destruc- 
tion, then, be a very different thing from the destruction 
of material beings, and does the latter furnish an anal- 
ogy or presumption in support of the former? To 
me, the undoubted fact, that the mind thirsts for con- 
tinued being, just in proportion as it obeys the will 
of its Maker, is a proof, next to irresistible, of its 
being destined by him for immortality. 



238 



DISCOURSE IX. 



4. Let me add one more destination between the 
mind and material forms. I return to the tree. We 
speak of the tree as destroyed. We say that destruc- 
tion is the order of nature, and some say that man 
must not hope to escape the universal law. Now we 
deceive ourselves in this use of words. There is in 
reality no destruction in the material world. True 
the tree is resolved into its elements. But its ele- 
ments survive, and, still more, they survive to fulfill the 
same end which they before accomplished. Not a 
power of nature is lost. The particles of the decayed 
tree are only left at liberty to form new, perhaps more 
beautiful and useful combinations. They may shoot 
up into more luxuriant foliage, or enter into the struc- 
ture of the highest animals. But were mind to perish, 
there would be absolute, irretrievable destruction ; for 
mind, from its nature, is something individual, an im- 
compounded essence, which cannot be broken into 
parts, and enter into union with other minds. I am 
myself, and can become no other being. My ex- 
perience, my history, cannot become my neighbour's. 
My consciousness, my memory, my interest in my 
past life, my affections, cannot be transferred. If in 
any instance I have withstood temptation, and through 
such resistance have acquired power over myself and 
a claim to the approbation of my fellow beings, this re- 
sistance, this power, this claim are my own ; I can- 
not make them another's. I can give away my prop* 
erty, my limbs ; but that which makes myself, in 
other words, my consciousness, my recollections, my 
feelings, my hopes, these can never become parts of 
another mind. In the extinction of a thinking, moral 



DISCOURSE IX. 



239 



being, who has gained truth and virtue, there would 
be an absolute destruction. This event would not 
be as the setting of the sun, which is a transfer of 
light to new regions ; but a quenching of the light. 
It would be a ruin such as nature nowhere exhibits, 
a ruin of what is infinitely more precious than the 
outward universe, and is not, therefore, to be inferred 
from any of the changes of the material world. 

I am aware, that views of this nature, intended to 
show us that immortally is impressed on the soul itself, 
fail to produce conviction from various causes. There 
are not a few, who are so accustomed to look on the 
errors and crimes of society, that human nature seems 
to them little raised above the brutal ; and they hear, 
with a secret incredulity, of those distinctions and ca- 
pacities of the mind which point to its perpetual exis- 
tence. To such men, I might say, that it is a vicious 
propensity which leads them to fasten continually and 
exclusively on the sins of human nature ; just as it is 
criminal to fix the thoughts perpetually on the miseries 
of human life, and to see nothing but evil in the order 
of creation and the providence of God. But, passing 
over this, I allow that human nature abounds in crime. 
But this does not destroy my conviction of its great- 
ness and immortality. I say that I see in crime itself 
the proofs of human greatness and of an immortal na- 
ture. The position may seem extravagant, but it may 
be fully sustained. 

I ask you first to consider, what is implied in 
crime. Consider in what it originates. It has its 
origin in the noblest principle that can belong 



240 



DISCOURSE IX. 



to any being; I mean, in moral freedom. There 
can be no crime without liberty of action, with- 
out moral power. Were man a machine, were he a 
mere creature of sensation and impulse, like the brute, 
he could do no wrong. It is only because he has the 
faculties of reason and conscience, and a power over 
himself, that he is capable of contracting guilt. Thus 
great guilt is itself a testimony to the high endowments 
of the soul. 

In the next place, let me ask you to consider, 
whence it is that man sins. He sins by being exposed 
to temptation. Now the great design of temptation 
plainly is, that the soul, by withstanding it, should gain 
strength, should make progress, should become a pro- 
per object of divine reward. That is, man sins through 
an exposure which is designed to carry him forward to 
perfection, so that the cause of his guilt points to a 
continued and improved existence. 

In the next place, I say, that guilt has a peculiar 
consciousness belonging to it, which speaks strongly of 
a future life. It carries with it intimations of retribu- 
tion. Its natural associate is fear. The connexion 
of misery with crime is anticipated by a kind of moral 
instinct ; and the very circumstance, that the unprinci- 
pled man sometimes escapes present suffering, sug- 
gests more strongly a future state, where this apparent 
injustice will be redressed, and where present prosperity 
will become an aggravation of woe. Guilt sometimes 
speaks of a future state even in louder and more sol- 
emn tones than virtue. It has been known to over- 
whelm the spirit with terrible forebodings, and has 
found through its presentiments the hell which it feared. 



DISCOURSE IX. 



241 



Thus guilt does not destroy, but corroborates, the 
proofs contained in the soul itself of its own future being. 

Let me add one more thought. The sins, which 
abound in the world, and which are so often adduced 
to chill our belief in the capacities and vast prospects 
of human nature, serve to place in stronger relief, and 
in brighter light, the examples of piety and virtue, 
which, all must acknowledge, are to be found among 
the guilty multitude. A mind which, in such a world, 
amidst so many corrupting influences, holds fast to 
truth, duty, and God, is a nobler mind, than any which 
could be formed in the absence of such temptation. 
Thus the great sinfulness of the world makes the vir- 
tue which exists in it more glorious ; and the very 
struggles which the good man has to maintain with its 
allurements and persecutions, prepare him for a bright- 
er reward. To me such views are singularly interest- 
ing and encouraging. I delight to behold the testi- 
mony which sin itself furnishes to man's greatness and 
immortality. I indeed see great guilt on earth ; but I 
see it giving occasion to great moral strength, and to 
singular devotion and virtue in the good, and thus 
throwing on human nature a lustre which more than 
compensates for its own deformity. I do not shut my 
eyes on the guilt of my race. I see, in history, human 
malignity, so aggravated, so unrelenting, as even to 
pursue with torture, and to doom to the most agonizing 
death, the best of human beings. But when I see these 
beings unmoved by torture ; meek 5 and calm, and for- 
giving in their agonies ; superior to death, and never 
so glorious as in the last hour, — - 1 forget the guilt w T hich 
persecutes them, in my admiration of their virtue. In. 
21 



242 



DISCOURSE IX. 



their sublime constancy, I see a testimony to the worth 
and immortality of human nature, that outweighs 
the wickedness of which they seem to be the victims ; 
and I feel an assurance, which nothing can wrest from 
me, that the godlike virtue, which has thus been 
driven from earth, will find a home, an everlasting 
home, in its native heaven. Thus sin itself becomes 
a witness to the future life of man. 

I have thus, my hearers, endeavoured to show, that 
our nature, the more it is inquired into, discovers more 
clearly the impress of immortality. I do not mean,, 
that this evidence supersedes all other. From its very 
nature it can only be understood thoroughly by im- 
proved and purified minds. The proof of immortality, 
which is suited to all understandings, is found in the 
Gospel, sealed by the blood and confirmed by the 
resurrection of Christ. But this, I think, is made 
more impressive, by a demonstration of its harmony 
with the teachings of nature. To me, nature and reve- 
lation speak with one voice on the great theme of man's 
iuture being. Let not their joint witness be unheard. 

How full, how bright are the evidences of this grand 
truth. How weak are the common arguments, which 
skepticism arrays against it. To me, there is but one 
objection against immortality, if objection it may be 
called, and this arises from the very greatness of the 
truth. My mind sometimes sinks under its weight, 
is lost in its immensity ; I scarcely dare believe that 
such a good is placed within my reach. When I 
think of myself, as existing through all future ages, as 
surviving this earth and that sky, as exempted from 
every imperfection and error of my present being, as 



DISCOURSE IX. 



243 



clothed with an angel's glory, as comprehending with 
my intellect and embracing in my affections an extent 
of creation compared with which the earth is a point ; 
when I think of myself, as looking on the outward 
universe with an organ of vision that will reveal to 
me a beauty and harmony and order not now imag- 
ined, and as having an access to the minds of the wise 
and good, which will make them in a sense my own; 
when 1 think of myself, as forming friendships with 
innumerable beings of rich and various intellect and 
of the noblest virtue, as introduced to the society 
of heaven, as meeting there the great and excellent 
of whom I have read in history, as joined with " the 
just made perfect" in an ever-enlarging ministry of 
benevolence, as conversing with Jesus Christ with the 
familiarity of friendship, and especially as having an 
immediate intercourse with God, such as the closest 
intimacies of earth dimly shadow forth ; — when this 
thought of my future being comes to me, whilst I hope, 
I also fear ; the blessedness seems too great ; the con- 
sciousness of present weakness and unworthiness is 
almost too strong for hope. But when, in this ^rame 
of mind, I look round on the creation, and see there 
the marks of an omnipotent goodness, to which noth- 
ing is impossible, and from which every thing may be 
hoped ; when I see around me the proofs of an Infi- 
nite Father, who must desire the perpetual progress 
of his intellectual offspring; when I look next at the 
human mind, and see what powers a few years have 
unfolded, and discern in it the capacity of everlasting 
improvement; and especially when I look at Jesus, 
the conqueror of death, the heir of immortality, who 



244 



DISCOURSE IX. 



has gone as the forerunner of mankind into the man- 
sions of light and purity, I can and do admit the 
almost overpowering thought of the everlasting life, 
growth, felicity of the human soul. 

To each of us, my friends, is this felicity offered ; a 
good which turns to darkness and worthlessness the 
splendor and excellence of the most favored lot 
on earth. I say, it is offered. It cannot he forced on 
us ; from its nature, it must be won. Immortal hap- 
piness is nothing more than the unfolding of our own 
minds, the full, bright exercise of our best powers ; 
and these powers are never to be unfolded here or 
hereafter, but through our own free exertion. To 
anticipate a higher existence whilst w r e neglect our 
own souls, is a delusion on which reason frowns no less 
than revelation Dream not of a heaven into which 
you may enter, live here as you may. To such 
as waste the present state, the future will not, cannot^ 
bring happiness. There is no concord between them 
and that world of purity. A human being, who has 
lived without God and without self-improvement, can 
no more enjoy Heaven, than a mouldering body, 
lifted from the tomb and placed amidst beautiful pros- 
pects, can enjoy the light through its decayed eyes, 
or teel the balmy air which blows away its dust. 
My hearers, immortality is a glorious doctrine; but 
not given us for speculation or amusement. Its hap- 
piness is to be realized only through our own strug- 
gles with ourselves, only through our own reaching 
forward to new virtue and piety. To be joined with 
Christ in Heaven, we must be joined with him now in 
spirit, in the conquest of temptation, in charity and 



DISCOURSE IX. 245 

well-doing. Immortality should begin here. The 
seed is now to be sown, which is to expand for ever. 
" Be not weary then in well-doing ; for in due time 
we shall reap, if we faint not.' 5 



21* 



DISCOURSE X. 



EPHESIANS vi. 24. 

GRACE BE WITH ALL THEM THAT LOVE OUR LORD JESUS 
CHRIST IN SINCERITY. 

I propose, in this discourse, to speak of Love to 
Christ, and especially of the foundations on which it 
rests. I will not detain you by remarks on the impor- 
tance of the subject. I trust, that you feel it, and that 
no urgency is needed to secure your serious attention. 

Love to Christ is said, and said with propriety, to 
be a duty, not of Natural, but of Revealed reli- 
gion. Other precepts of Christianity are dictates of 
nature as well as of revelation. They result from the 
original and permanent relations which we bear to our 
Creator and our fellow creatures ; and are written by 
God on the mind, as well as in the Bible. For exam- 
ple, gratitude towards the Author of our being, and 
justice and benevolence towards men, are inculcated 
with more or less distinctness by our moral facul- 
ties ; they are parts of the inward law which belongs 
to a rational mind ; and accordingly, wherever men 
are found, you find some conviction of these duties, 
some sense of their obligation to a higher power 
and to one another. But the same is not true of the 



DISCOURSE X. 



247 



duty of love to Jesus Christ : for, as the knowledge 
of him is not communicated by nature, as his name 
is not written, like that of God. on the heavens 
and earth, but is confined to countries where his Gos- 
pel is preached, it is plain that no sense of obligation 
to him can be felt beyond these bounds, No regard 
is due or can be paid to him beyond these. It is com- 
monly said, therefore, that love to Christ is a duty of 
revealed, not natural religion, and this language is cor- 
rect : but let it not mislead us. Let us not imagine, 
that attachment to Jesus is an arbitrary duty, that it 
is unlike our other duties, that it is separate from com- 
mon virtue, or that it is not founded, like all virtues, 
in our constitution, or not recognised and enforced by 
natural conscience. We say, that nature does not 
enjoin this regard to the Saviour, simply because it 
does not make him known ; but, as soon as he is made 
known, nature enjoins love and veneration towards 
him as truly as towards God or towards excellent 
men. Reason and conscience teach us to regard him 
with a strong and tender interest. Love to him is not 
an arbitrary precept. It is not unlike our other affec- 
tions ; it requires for its culture no peculiar influen- 
ces from heaven : it stands on the same ground with 
all our" duties ; it is to be strengthened by the same 
means. It is essentially the same sentiment, feeling, 
or principle, which we put forth towards other excel- 
lent beings, whether in heaven or on earth. 

I make these remarks, because I apprehend that the 
duty of loving Jesus Christ has been so urged, as to 
seem to many particularly mysterious and obscure ; 
and the consequence has been, that by some it has 



248 



DISCOURSE X. 



been neglected as unnatural, unreasonable, and uncon- 
nected with common life ; whilst others, in seeking 
to cherish it, have rushed into wild, extravagant, and 
feverish emotions. I would rescue, if I can, this duty 
from neglect on the one hand, and from abuse on the 
other ; and to do this, nothing is necessary, but to show 
the true ground and nature of love to Christ. You 
will then see, not only that it is an exalted and gen- 
erous sentiment, but that it blends with, and gives 
support to, all the virtuous principles of the mind, 
and to all the duties, even the most common, of ac- 
tive life. 

There is another great good, which may result from 
a just explanation of the love due to Christ. You 
will see, that this sentiment has no dependence, at 
least no necessary dependence, on the opinions we 
may form about his place, or rank, in the universe. 
This topic has convulsed the church for ages. Chris- 
tians have cast away the spirit, in settling the precise 
dignity, of their Master. That this question is unim- 
portant, I do not say. That some views are more 
favorable to love towards him than others, I believe ; 
but I maintain that all opinions, adopted by different 
sects, include the foundation, on which veneration 
and attachment are due to our common Lord. This 
truth, for I hold it to be a plain truth, is so fitted to 
heal the wounds and allay the uncharitable fervors 
of Christ's divided church, that I shall rejoice, if I 
can set it forth to others as clearly as it rises to my 
own mind. 

To accomplish the ends now expressed, I am led 
to propose to you one great but simple question. 



DISCOURSE X. 



249 



What is it that constitutes Christ's claim to love and 
respect ? What is it that is to be loved in Christ ? 
Why are we to hold him dear ? I answer. There is but 
one ground for virtuous affection in the universe, 
but one object worthy of cherished and enduring love 
in heaven or on earth, and that is, Moral Goodness. 
I make no exceptions. My principle applies to all 
beings, to the Creator as well as to his creatures, 
The claim of God to the love of his rational offspring 
rests on the rectitude and benevolence of his will. 
It is the moral beauty and grandeur of his character, 
to which alone we are bound to pay homage. The 
only power which can and ought to be loved, is a 
beneficent and righteous power. The creation is 
glorious, and binds us to supreme and everlasting 
love to God, only because it sprung from and shows 
forth this energy of goodness ; nor has any being a 
claim on love, any farther than this same energy- 
dwells in him, and is manifested in him. I know no 
exception to this principle. I can conceive of no 
being, who can have any claim to affection, but what 
rests on his character, meaning by this the spirit and 
principles which constitute his mind, and from which 
he acts ; nor do I know but one character which 
entitles a being to our hearts, and it is that, which the 
Scriptures express by the word Righteousness : which 
in man is often called Virtue, in God, Holiness ; which 
consists essentially in supreme reverence for and adop- 
tion of what is right ; and of which benevolence, or 
universal charity, is the brightest manifestation. 

After these remarks, you will easily understand 
what I esteem the ground of love to Christ, It is his 



250 



DISCOURSE X. 



spotless purity, his moral perfection, his unrivalled 
goodness. It is the spirit of his religion, which is the 
spirit of God, dwelling in him without measure. Of 
consequence, to love Christ is to love the perfection 
of virtue, of righteousness, of benevolence ; and the 
great excellence of this love is, that, by cherishing it, 
we imbibe, we strengthen in our own souls the most 
illustrious virtue, and through Jesus become like to 
God. 

From the view now given, you see that love to 
Jesus Christ is a perfectly natural sentiment ; I mean, 
one which our natural sense of right enjoins and ap- 
proves, and which our minds are constituted to feel and 
to cherish, as truly as any affection to the good whom 
we know on earth. It is not a theological, mysterious 
feeling, which some supernatural and inexplicable 
agency must generate within us. It has its foundation 
or root in the very frame of our minds, in that sense 
of right by which we are enabled to discern, and bound 
to love, perfection. I observe next, that, according to 
this view, it is, as I have said, an exalted and gener- 
ous affection ; for it brings us into communion and con- 
tact with the sublimest character ever revealed among 
men. It includes and nourishes great thoughts and 
high aspirations, and gives us here on earth the bene- 
fit of intercourse with celestial beings. 

Do you not also see that the love of Christ, accord- 
ing to the view now given of it, has no dependence on 
any particular views which are formed of his nature 
by different sects ? According to all sects, is he not 
perfect, spotless in virtue, the representative and re- 
plendent image of the moral goodness and rectitude 



DISCOURSE X. 



251 



of God ? However contending sects may be divided 
as to other points, they all agree in the moral perfec- 
tion of his character. All recognise his most glorious 
peculiarity, his sublime and unsullied goodness. All 
therefore see in him that which alone deserves love 
and veneration. 

I am aware, that other views are not uncommon. 
It is said, that a true love to Christ requires just opin- 
ions concerning him, and that they who form different 
opinions of him, however they may use the same 
name, do not love the same being. We must Tcnow 
him, it is said, in order to esteem him as we ought. 
Be it so. To love Christ, we must know him. But 
what must we know respecting him ? Must we know 
his countenance and form, must we know the manner 
in which he existed before his birth, or the manner in 
which he now exists ? Must we know his precise 
rank in the universe, his precise power and influence ? 
On all these points, indeed, just views would be grati- 
fying and auxiliary to virtue. But love to Christ may 
exist, and grow strong, without them. What we need 
to this end, is the knowledge of his mind, his vir- 
tues, his principles of action. No matter how pro- 
foundly we speculate about Christ, or how profuse- 
ly we heap upon him epithets of praise and admi- 
ration ; if we do not understand the distinguishing 
virtues of his character, and see and feel their gran- 
deur, we are as ignorant of him as if we had never 
heard his name, nor can we offer him an acceptable 
love. I desire indeed to know Christ's rank in the 
universe ; but rank is nothing, except as it proves 
and manifests superior virtue. High station only de- 



252 



DISCOURSE X. 



grades a being who fills it unworthily. It is the 
mind which gives dignity to the office, not the office 
to the mind. x\ll glory is of the soul. Accordingly we 
know little or nothing of another until we look into 
his soul. I cannot be said to know a being of a sin- 
gularly great character, because I have learned from 
what region he came, to what family he belongs, or 
what rank he sustains. I can only know him as far as I 
discern the greatness of his spirit, the unconquerable 
strength of his benevolence, his loyalty to God and 
duty, his power to act and suffer in a good and righ- 
teous cause, and his intimate communion with God. 
Who knows Christ best ? I answer. It is he who, in 
reading his history, sees and feels most distinctly and 
deeply the perfection by which he was distinguished. 
Who knows Jesus best? It is he, who, not resting 
in general and almost unmeaning praises, becomes ac- 
quainted with what was peculiar, characteristic, and 
individual in his mind, and who has thus framed 
to himself, not a dim image called Jesus, but a 
living being, with distinct and glorious features, and 
with all the reality of a well-known friend. Who 
best knows Jesus ? I answer, It is he, who deliber- 
ately feels and knows, that his character is of a higher 
order than all other characters which have appeared 
on earth, and who thirsts to commune with and re- 
semble it. I hope I am plain. When I hear, as I do, 
men disputing about Jesus, and imagining that they 
know him by settling some theory as to his generation 
in time or eternity, or as to his rank in the scale of 
being, I feel that their knowledge of him is about as 
great as I should have of some saint or hero, by study-* 



DISCOURSE X. 



253 



ing his genealogy. These controversies have built 
up a technical theology, but give no insight into 
the mind and heart of Jesus ; and without this the true 
knowledge of him cannot be enjoyed. And here I 
would observe, not in the spirit of reproach, but from a 
desire to do good, that I know not a more effectual meth- 
od of hiding Jesus from us, of keeping us strangers to 
him, than the inculcation of the doctrine which makes 
him the same being with his Father, makes him God 
himself. This doctrine throws over him a mistiness. 
For myself, when I attempt to bring it home, I have 
not a real being before me, not a soul which I can under- 
stand and sympathize with, but a vague, shifting image, 
which gives nothing of the stability of knowledge. A 
being, consisting of two natures, two souls, one Divine 
and another human, one finite and another infinite, is 
made up of qualities which destroy one another, and 
leave nothing for distinct apprehension. This com- 
pound of different minds, and of contradictory attri- 
butes, I cannot, if I would, regard as one conscious 
person, one intelligent agent. It strikes me almost irre- 
sistibly as a fiction. On the other hand, Jesus, con- 
templated as he is set before us in the gospel, as one 
mind, one heart, answering to my own in all its es- 
sential powers and affections, but purified, enlarged, 
exalted, so as to constitute him the unsullied image 
of God and a perfect model, is a being, who bears 
the marks of reality, whom I can understand, whom 
I can receive into my heart as the best of friends, 
with whom I can become intimate, and whose society 
I can and do anticipate among the chief blessings ol 
my future being. 

22 



254 



DISCOURSE X. 



My friends, I have now stated, in general, what 
knowledge of Christ is most important, and is alone 
required in order to a true attachment to him. Let me 
still farther illustrate my views, by descending to one 
or two particulars. Among the various excellences of 
Jesus, he was distinguished by a benevolence so deep, 
so invincible, that injury and outrage had no power 
over it. His kindness towards men was in no degree 
diminished by their wrong-doing. The only intercession 
which he offered in his sufferings, was for those who 
at that very moment were wreaking on him their ven- 
geance ; and, what is more remarkable, he not only 
prayed for them, but with an unexampled generosity 
and candor, urged in their behalf the only extenuation 
which their conduct would admit. Now, to know Jesus 
Christ, is to understand this attribute of his mind, to 
understand the strength and triumph of the benevolent 
principle in this severest trial, to understand the energy 
with which he then held fast the virtue which he had 
enjoined. It is to see in the mind of Jesus at that mo- 
ment a moral grandeur which raised him above all 
around him. This is to know him. I will suppose 
now a man to have studied all the controversies about 
Christ's nature, and to have arrived at the truest no- 
tions of his rank in the universe. But this incident in 
Christ's history, this discovery of his character, has 
never impressed him ; the glory of a philanthropy 
which embraces one's enemies, has never dawned 
upon him. With all his right opinions about the 
unity, or the trinity, he lives, and acts towards others, 
very much as if Jesus had never lived or died. Now 
I say, that such a man does not know Christ. I say, 



DISCOURSE X. 



255 



that he is a stranger to him. I say, that the great 
truth is hidden from him ; that his skill in religious 
controversy is of little more use to him than would be 
the learning by rote of a language which he does not 
understand. He knows the name of Christ, but the 
excellence which that name imports, and which gives it 
its chief worth, is to him as an unknown tongue. 

I have referred to one view of Christ's character. 
I might go through his whole life. I will only ob- 
serve, that in the New Testament, the crucifixion of 
Jesus is always set forth as the most illustrious portion 
of his history. The spirit of self-sacrifice, of deliber- 
ate self-immolation, of calm, patient endurance of the 
death of the cross, in the cause of truth, piety, virtue, 
human happiness, — this particular manifestation of love 
is always urged upon us in the New Testament, as 
the crowning glory of Jesus Christ. To understand 
this part of his character ; to understand him when he 
gave himself up to the shame and anguish of crucifixion ; 
to understand that sympathy with human misery, that 
love of human nature, that thirst for the recovery of 
the human soul, that zeal for human virtue, that energy 
of moral principle, that devotion to God's purposes, 
through which the severest suffering was chosen and 
borne, and into which no suffering, or scorn, or deser- 
tion, or ingratitude, could infuse the least degree of 
selfishness, unkindness, doubt, or infirmity, — to under- 
stand this, is to understand Jesus ; and he who wants 
sensibility to this, be his speculations what they may, 
has every thing to learn respecting the Saviour. 

You will see, from the views now given, that I con- 
sider love to Christ as requiring nothing so much ; as 



256 



DISCOURSE X. 



that we fix our thoughts on the excellence of his char- 
acter, stud}' it. penetrate our minds with what was pe- 
culiar in it. and cherish profound veneration for it ; and 
consequently I fear, that attachment to him has been 
diminished by the habit of regarding other things in 
Christ as more important than his lovely and sublime 
virtues. 

Christians have been prone to fix on something mys- 
terious in his nature, or else on the dignity of his offi- 
ces, as his chief claim ; and in this way his supreme 
glory has been obscured. His nature and offices I, of 
course, would not disparage ; but let them not be exalt- 
ed above his Moral Worth. I maintain that this gives 
to his nature and offices all their claims to love and 
veneration, and that we understand them only as far 
as we see this to pervade them.. This principle I 
would uphold against Christians of very different modes 
of faith. 

First, there are Christians who maintain that Jesus 
Christ is to be loved as the Son of God, understanding 
by this title some mysterious connexion and identity 
with the Father. Far be it from me to deny, that 
the Divine Sonship of Jesus constitutes his true claim 
on our affection : but I do deny, that the mysterious 
properties of this relation form any part of this claim ; 
for it is very clear that love to a beins: must rest on 
what we know of him, and not on unknown and unin- 
telligible attributes. In saying that the Divine Sonship 
of Jesus is the great foundation of attachment to him, 
I say nothing inconsistent with the doctrine of this 
discourse, that the moral excellence of Jesus is the 
great object and ground of the love which is due to him. 



DISCOURSE X. 



257 



Indeed, I only repeat the principle, that he is to be 
loved exclusively for the virtues of h s character ; for 
what, I ask, is the great idea involved in his filial rela- 
tion to God? To be the Son of God, in the chief 
and highest sense of that term, is to bear the likeness, 
to possess the spirit, to be partaker of the moral per- 
fections of God. This is the essential idea. To be 
God's Son is to be united with him by consent and 
accordance of mind. Jesus was the only begotten 
Son, because he was the perfect image and represen- 
tative of God, especially of divine philanthropy ; be- 
cause he espoused as his own the benevolent purposes 
of God towards the human race, and yielded himself 
to their accomplishment with an entire self-sacrifice. 
To know Jesus as the Son of God, is not to understand 
what theologians have written about his eternal gen- 
eration, or about a mystical, incomprehensible union be- 
tween Christ and his Father. It is something far 
higher and more instructive. It is to see in Christ, 
if I may say so, the lineaments of the Universal Father. 
It is to discern in him a godlike purity and goodness. 
It is to understand his harmony with the Divine Mind, 
and the entireness and singleness of love with which 
he devoted himself to the purposes of God, and the in- 
terests of the human race. Of consequence, to love 
Jesus as the Son of God, is to love the spotless purity 
and godlike charity of his soul. 

There are other Christians who differ widely 
from those of whom I have now spoken, but who 
conceive that Christ's Offices, Inspiration, Miracles, 
are his chief claims to veneration, and who, I 
fear, in extolling these, have overlooked what is in- 
22* 



258 



DISCOURSE X. 



comparably more glorious, the moral dignity of his 
mind, the purity and inexhaustibleness of his benevo- 
lence. It is possible, that to many who hear me. 
Christ seems to have been more exalted when he 
received from his Father supernatural light and 
truth, or when with superhuman energy he quelled 
the storm and raised the dead, than when he wept 
over the city which was in a few days to doom him 
to the most shameful and agonizing death; and yet 
his chief glory consisted in the spirit through which 
these tears were shed. Christians have yet to learn 
that inspiration, and miracles, and outward dignities, 
are nothing compared with the soul. We all need to 
understand better than w r e have done, that noble pas- 
sage of Paul, " Though I speak with the tongues of 
men and of angels, and understand all mysteries, and 
have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and 
have not charity, [disinterestedness, love,] I am noth- 
ing ; " and this is as true of Christ as of Paul. Indeed 
it is true of all beings, and yet, I fear, it is not felt as it 
should be by the multitude of Christians. 

You tell me, my friends, that Christ's unparalleled 
inspiration, his perpetual reception of light from God, 
that this was his supreme distinction ; and a great dis- 
tinction undoubtedly it was : but I affirm, that Christ's 
inspiration, though conferred on him without measure, 
gives him no claim to veneration or love, any farther 
than it found within him a virtue, which accorded 
with, welcomed, and adopted it ; any farther than his 
own heart responded to the truths he received ; any 
farther than he sympathized with, and espoused as his 
own, the benevolent purposes of God, which he was 



DISCOURSE X. 



259 



sent to announce ; any farther than the spirit of the 
religion which he preached was his own spirit, and 
was breathed from his life as well as from his lips. 
In other words his inspiration w 7 as made glorious 
through his virtues. Mere inspiration seems to me 
a very secondary thing. Suppose the greatest truths 
in the universe to be revealed supernaturally to a being 
who should take no interest in them, w T ho should not 
see and feel their greatness, but should repeat them 
mechanically, as they were put into his mouth by 
the Deity. Such a man w T ould be inspired, and would 
teach the greatest verities, and yet he would be noth- 
ing, and would have to claim to reverence. 

The excellence of Jesus did not consist in his mere 
inspiration, but in the virtue and love w T hich prepared 
him to receive it, and by which it was made effectual 
to the world. He did not passively hear, and mechan- 
ically repeat, certain doctrines from God, but his whole 
soul accorded with what he heard. Every truth which 
he uttered, came warm and living from his own mind ; 
and it was this pouring of his own soul into his instruc- 
tions, which gave them much of their power. Whence 
came the authority and energy, the conscious dignity, 
the tenderness and sympathy, with which Jesus taught ? 
They came not from inspiration, but from the mind 
of him who was inspired. His personal virtues gave 
power to his teachings ; and without these no inspira- 
tion could have made him the source of such light and 
strength as he now communicates to mankind. 

My friends, I have aimed to show in this discourse, 
that the virtue, purity, rectitude of Jesus Christ, is 



260 



DISCOURSE X. 



his most honorable distinction, and constitutes his 
great claim to veneration and love. I can direct you 
to nothing in Christ, more important than his tried, and 
victorious, and perfect goodness. Others may love 
Christ for mysterious attributes ; I love him for the 
rectitude of his soul and his life. I love him for that 
benevolence, which went through Judea, instructing 
the ignorant, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, 
I love him for that universal charity, which compre- 
hended the despised publican, the hated Samaritan, 
the benighted heathen, and sought to bring a world to 
God and to happiness. I love him for that gentle, 
mild, forbearing spirit, which no insult, outrage, injury 
could overpower ; and which desired as earnestly the 
repentance and happiness of its foes, as the happiness 
of its friends. I love him for the spirit of magnanimi- 
ty, constancy, and fearless rectitude, with which, amidst 
peril and opposition, he devoted himself to the work 
which God gave him to do. I love him for the wise 
and enlightened zeal with which he espoused the true, 
the spiritual interests of mankind, and through which 
he lived and died to redeem them from every sin, to 
frame them after his own godlike virtue. I love him, 
I have said, for his moral excellence; I know nothing 
else to love. I know nothing so glorious in the Creator 
or his creatures. This is the greatest gift which God 
bestows, the greatest to be derived from his Son. 

You see why I call you to cherish the love of Christ. 
This love I do not recommend as a luxury of feeling, 
as an ecstasy bringing immediate and overflowing joy. 
I view it in a nobler light. I call you to love Jesus, 
that you may bring yourselves into contact and com- 



DISCOURSE X. 



261 



munion with perfect virtue, and may become what 
you love. I know no sincere, enduring good but the 
moral excellence which shines forth in Jesus Christ. 
Your wealth, your outward comforts and distinctions, 
are poor, mean, contemptible, compared with this ; 
and to prefer them to this is self-debasement, self- 
destruction. May this great truth penetrate our souls ; 
and may we bear witness in our common lives, and 
especially in trial, in sore temptation, that nothing is 
so dear to us as the virtue of Christ. 



DISCOURSE XI. 



EPHESIANS vi. 24. 

GRACE BE WITH ALL THEM THAT LOVE OUR LORD JESUS 
CHRIST IN SINCERITY. 

In the preceding discourse, I considered the nature 
and ground of love to Christ. The subject is far from 
being exhausted. I propose now, after a few remarks 
on the importance and happiness of this attachment, 
to call your attention to some errors in relation to it, 
which prevail in the Christian world. 

A virtuous attachment purines the heart. In loving 
the excellent, we receive strength to follow them. 
It is happy for us when a pure affection springs up 
within us, when friendship knits us with holy and 
generous minds. It is happy for us when a being of 
noble sentiments and beneficent life enters our circle, 
becomes an object of interest to us, and by affectionate 
intercourse takes a strong hold on our hearts. Not 
a few can trace the purity and elevation of their minds 
to connexion with an individual, w T ho has won them 
by the beauty of his character to the love and prac- 
tice of righteousness. These views show us the ser- 



DISCOURSE XI. 



263 



vice which Jesus Christ has done to mankind, simply 
in offering himself before them as an object of attach- 
ment and affection. In inspiring love, he is a bene- 
factor. A man brought to see and feel the godlike 
virtues of Jesus Christ, who understands his character 
and is attracted and won by it, has gained, in this sen- 
timent, immense aid in his conflict with evil and in 
his pursuit of perfection. And he has not only 
gained aid, but happiness ; for a true love is in itself a 
noble enjoyment. It is the proper delight of a ration- 
al and moral being, leaving no bitternness or shame 
behind, not enervating like the world's pleasures, but 
giving energy and a lofty consciousness to the mind. 

Our nature was framed for virtuous attachments. 
How strong and interesting are the affections of do- 
mestic life, the conjugal, parental, filial ties. But the 
heart is not confined to our homes, or even to this 
world. There are more sacred attachments than 
these, in which instinct has no part, which have their 
origin in our highest faculties, which are less tumultu- 
ous and impassioned than the affections of nature, but 
more enduring, more capable of growth, more peace- 
ful, far happier, and far nobler. Such is love to Je- 
sus Christ, the most purifying, and the happiest attach- 
ment, next to the love of our Creator, which we can 
form. I wish to aid you in cherishing this sentiment, 
and for this end I have thought, that in the present 
discourse it would be well to point out some wrong 
views, which I think have obstructed it, and obscured 
its glory. 

I apprehend, that, among those Christians who 
bear the name of Rational, from the importance which 



264 



DISCOURSE XL 



they give to the exercise of reason in religion, love to 
Christ has lost something of its honor, in conse- 
quence of its perversion. It has too often been sub- 
stituted for practical religion. Not a few have 
professed a very fervent attachment to Jesus, and 
have placed great confidence in this feeling, who, 
at the same time, have seemed to think little of his 
precepts, and have even spoken of them as unimpor- 
tant compared with certain doctrines about his person 
or nature. Gross errors of this kind have led, as it 
seems te me, to the opposite extreme. They have 
particularly encouraged among calm and sober people 
the idea, .that the great object of Christ was to give 
a religion, to teach great and everlasting truth, and 
that our concern is with his religion rather than with 
himself. The great question, as such people say, 
is, not what Jesus tvas, but what he revealed. In 
this way a distinction has been made between Jesus 
and his religion ; and, whilst some sects have done 
little but talk of Christ and his person, others have 
dwelt on the principles be taught, to the neglect, in a 
measure, of the Divine Teacher. I consider this as 
an error, to which some of us may be exposed, and 
which therefore deserves consideration. 

Now, I grant, that Jesus Christ came to give a reli- 
gion, to reveal truth. This is his great office ; but I 
maintain, that this is no reason for overlooking Jesus; 
for his religion has an intimate and peculiar connexion 
with himself. It derives authority and illustration from 
his character. Jesus is his religion embodied, and 
made visible. The connexion between him and his 
system is peculiar. It differs altogether from that 



DISCOURSE XI. 



265 



which ancient philosophers bore to their teachings. 
An ancient sage wrote a book, and the book is of 
equal value to us, whether we know its author or not. 
But there is no such thing as Christianity without 
Christ. We cannot know it separately from him. 
It is not a book which Jesus wrote. It is his con- 
versation, his character, his history, his life, his death, 
his resurrection. He pervades it throughout. In 
loving him, we love his religion ; and a just interest in 
this cannot be awakened, but by contemplating it as it 
shone forth in himself. 

Christ's religion, I have said, is very imperfect 
without himself ; and therefore they who would make 
an abstract of his precepts, and say that it is enough 
to follow these without thinking of their author, griev- 
ously mistake, and rob the system of much of its ener- 
gy. I mean not to disparage the precepts of Christ, 
considered in themselves. But their full power is 
only to be understood and felt, by those who place 
themselves near the Divine Teacher, who see the 
celestial fervor of his affection whilst he utters them, 
who follow his steps from Bethlehem to Calvary, and 
witness the expression of his precepts in his own life. 
These come to me almost as new precepts, when I 
associate them with Jesus. His command to love my 
enemies, becomes intelligible and bright, when I stand 
by his cross and hear his prayer for his murderers. I 
understand what he meant by the self-denial which he 
taught, when I see him foregoing the comforts of life, 
and laying down life itself, for the good of others. I 
learn the true character of that benevolence, by which 
human nature is perfected, how it unites calmness and 
23 



266 



DISCOURSE XI. 



earnestness, tenderness and courage, condescension 
and dignity, feeling and action ; this I learn in the 
life of Jesus as no words could teach me. So I am 
instructed in the nature of piety by the same model. 
The command to love God with all my heart, if only 
written, might have led me into extravagance, enthu- 
siasm, and neglect of common duties ; for religious ex- 
citement has a peculiar tendency to excess : but in Je- 
sus I see a devotion to God, entire, perfect, never 
remitted, yet without the least appearance of passion, 
as calm and self-possessed as the love which a good 
mind bears to a parent ; and in him I am taught, as 
words could not teach, how to join supreme regard 
to my Creator, with active charity and common duties 
towards my fellow beings. 

And not only the precepts, but the great doctrines 
of Christianity, are bound up with Jesus, and cannot 
be truly understood without him. For example, one 
of the great doctrines of Christianity, perhaps its chief, 
is the kind interest of God in all his creatures, not 
only in the good but in the evil ; his placable, clement, 
merciful character ; his desire to recover and purify 
and make forever happy even those who have stained 
themselves with the blackest guilt. The true char- 
acter of God in this respect I see indeed in his provi- 
dence, I read it in his word, and for every manifes- 
tation of it I am grateful. But w T hen I see his spot- 
less and beloved Son, to whom his power was pecu- 
liarly delegated, and in whom he peculiarly dwelt, giving 
singular attention to the most fallen and despised 
men, casting away all outward pomp that he might 
mingle familiarly with the poor and neglected ; when 



DISCOURSE XI. 



267 



I see him sitting at table with the publican and the sin- 
ner, inviting them to approach him as a friend, suffering 
the woman, whose touch was deemed pollution, to bedew 
his feet with tears ; and when I hear him in the midst 
of such a concourse saying, " I am come to seek and to 
save that which w T as lost," - — I have a conviction of the 
lenity, benignity, grace of that God, whose represen- 
tative and chosen minister he was, such as no abstract 
teaching could have given me. Let me add one more 
doctrine, that of immortality. I prize every evidence 
of this great truth ; I look within and without me, for 
some pledge, that I am not to perish in the grave, that 
this mind, with its thoughts and affections, is to live, 
and improve, and be perfected, and to find that joy 
for which it thirsts and which it cannot find on earth. 
Christ's teaching on this subject is invaluable ; but 
what power does this teaching gain, when I stand by 
his sepulchre, and see the stone rolled away, and be- 
hold the great revealer of immortality, rising in pow- 
er and triumph, and ascending to the life and happi- 
ness he had promised ! 

Thus Christianity, from beginning to end, is inti- 
mately connected with its Divine Teacher. It is not 
an abstract system. The rational Christian who would 
think of it as such, who, in dwelling on the religion, 
overlooks its Revealer, is unjust to it. Would he see 
and feel its power, let him see it warm, living, breath- 
ing, acting in the mind, heart, and life of its Founder. 
Let him love it there. In other words, let him love 
the character of Jesus, justly viewed, and he will 
love the religion in the way most fitted to make it 
the power of God unto salvation. 



268 



DISCOURSE XL 



I have said that love to Christ, when he is justly 
viewed, that is, when it is an enlightened and rational 
affection, includes the love of his whole religion ; but I 
beg you to remember that I give this praise only to 
an enlightened affection ; and such is not the most 
common, nor is it easily acquired. I apprehend that 
there is no sentiment, which needs greater care in its 
culture than this. Perhaps, in the present state of the 
world, no virtue is of more difficult acquisition than 
a pure and intelligent love towards Jesus. There 
is undoubtedly much of fervent feeling towards him 
in the Christian world. But let me speak plainly, 
I do it from no uncharitableness. I do it only to 
warn my fellow Christians. The greater part of this 
affection to Jesus seems to me of very doubtful 'worth. 
In many cases, it is an irregular fervor, which im- 
pairs the force and soundness of the mind, and which 
is substituted for obedience to his precepts, for the 
virtues which ennoble the soul. Much of what is call- 
ed love to Christ I certainly do not desire you or 
myself to possess. I know of no sentiment which 
needs more to be cleared from error and abuse, and 
I therefore feel myself bound to show you some of 
its corruptions. 

In the first place, I am persuaded that a love to 
Christ of quite a low character is often awakened by 
an injudicious use of his sufferings. I apprehend, that 
if the affection which many bear to Jesus were ana- 
lyzed, the chief ingredient in it would be found to be 
a tenderness awakened by his cross. In certain clas- 
ses of Christians, it is common for the religious teach- 
er to delineate the bleeding, dying Saviour, and to 



DISCOURSE XI. 



269 



detail his agonies, until men's natural sympathy is 
awakened ; and when assured that this deep woe was 
borne for themselves, they almost necessarily yield 
to the softer feelings of their nature. I mean not to 
find fault with this sensibility. It is happy for us 
that we are made to be touched by others' pains. 
Woe to him, w T ho has no tears for mortal agony. But 
in this emotion there is no virtue, no moral worth ; 
and we dishonor Jesus, when this is the chief tribute 
we offer him. I say there is no moral goodness in 
this feeling. To be affected, overpowered by a cru- 
cifixion, is the most natural thing in the world. Who 
of us, let me ask, whether religious or not, ever went 
into a Catholic church, and there saw the picture of 
Jesus hanging from his cross, his head bending under 
the weight of exhausting suffering, his hands and feet 
pierced with nails, and his body stained with his open 
wounds, and has not been touched by the sight ? Sup- 
pose that, at this moment, there were lifted up among us 
a human form, transfixed with a spear, and from 
which the warm lifeblood was dropping in the midst 
of us. Who would not be deeply moved? and when 
a preacher, gifted with something of an actor's power, 
places the cross, as it were, in the midst of a people, 
is it wonderful that they are softened and subdued ? 
I mean not to censure all appeals of this kind to the 
human heart. There is something interesting and en- 
couraging in the tear of compassion, There was wis- 
dom in the conduct of the Moravian Missionaries in 
Greenland, who, finding that the rugged and barba- 
rous natives were utterly insensible to general truth, 
depicted, with all possible vividness, the streaming 
23* 



270 



DISCOURSE XI. 



blood and dying agonies of Jesus, and thus caught 
the attention of the savage through his sympathies, 
whom they could not interest through his reason or 
his fears. But sensibility, thus awakened, is quite a dif- 
ferent thing from true, virtuous love to Jesus Christ ; 
and, when view T ed and cherished as such, it takes the 
place of higher affections. I have often been struck 
by the contrast between the use made of the cross in 
the pulpit, and the calm, unimpassioned manner in 
which the sufferings of Jesus are detailed by the 
Evangelists. These witnesses of Christ's last mo- 
ments, give you in simple language the particulars 
of that scene, without one remark, one word of emo- 
tion ; and if you read the Acts and Epistles, you will 
not find a single instance, in which the Apostles strove 
to make a moving picture of his crucifixion. No ; 
they honored Jesus too much, they felt too deeply 
the greatness of his character, to be moved as many 
are by the circumstances of his death. Reverence, 
admiration, sympathy with his sublime spirit, these 
swallowed up, in a great measure, sympathy with his 
sufferings. The cross was to them the last, crowning 
manifestation of a celestial mind ; they felt that it 
was endured to communicate the same mind to them 
and the world ; and their emotion was a holy joy in 
this consummate and unconquerable goodness. To 
be touched by suffering is a light thing. It is not the 
greatness of Christ's sufferings on the cross which is 
to move our whole souls, but the greatness of the spirit 
with which he suffered. There, in death, he proved 
his entire consecration of himself to the cause of God 
and mankind. There his love flowed forth towards 



DISCOURSE XI. 271 

his friends, his enemies, and the human race. It is 
moral greatness, it is victorious love, it is the energy 
of principle, which gives such interest to the cross of 
Christ. We are to look through the darkness which 
hung over him, through his wounds and pains, to his 
unbroken, disinterested, confiding spirit. To approach 
the cross for the purpose of weeping over a bleeding, 
dying friend, is to lose the chief influence of the cru- 
cifixion. We are to visit the cross, not to indulge a 
natural softness, but to acquire firmness of spirit, to 
fortify our minds for hardship and suffering in the 
cause of duty and of human happiness. To live as 
Christ lived, to die as Christ died, to give up ourselves 
as sacrifices to God, to conscience, to whatever good in- 
terest we can ad vance, — these are the lessons written 
with the blood of Jesus. His cross is to inspire us with 
a calm courage, resolution, and superiority to all temp- 
tation. I fear (is my fear groundless?) that a sym- 
pathy which enervates rather than fortifies, is the 
impression too often received from the crucifixion. 
The depression with which the Lord's table is too often 
approached, and too often left, shows, I apprehend, 
that the chief use of his sufferings is little understood, 
and that he is loved, not as a glorious sufferer who 
died to spread his own sublime spirit, but as a man of 
sorrows, a friend bowed down with the weight of grief. 

In the second place, love to Christ of a very defec- 
tive kind is cherished, in many, by the views which 
they are accustomed to take of themselves. They 
form irrational ideas of their own guilt, supposing it 
to have its origin in their very creation, and then rep- 
resent to their imaginations an abyss of fire and torment, 



272 



DISCOURSE XI. 



over which they hang, into which the anger of God is 
about to precipitate them, and from which nothing but 
Jesus can rescue them. Not a few, I apprehend, 
ascribe to Jesus Christ a greater compassion towards 
them than God is supposed to feel. His heart is ten- 
derer than that of the Universal Parent, and this ten- 
derness is seen in his plucking them by a mighty 
power from tremendous and infinite pain, from ever- 
lasting burnings. Now that Jesus, under such cir- 
cumstances should excite the mind strongly, should 
become the object of a very intense attachment, is 
almost necessary ; but the affection so excited is of 
very little worth. Let the universe seem to me 
wrapt in darkness, let God's throne send forth no 
light but blasting flashes, let Jesus be the only bright 
and cheering object to my affrighted and desolate soul, 
and a tumultuous gratitude will carry me towards him 
just as irresistibly as natural instinct carries the parent 
animal to its young. I do and must grieve at the 
modes commonly used to make Jesus Christ an in- 
teresting being. Even the Infinite Father is stripped 
of his glory for the sake of throwing a lustre round 
the Son. The condition of man is painted in fright- 
ful colors which cast unspeakable dishonor on his 
Creator, for the sake of magnifying the greatness of 
Christ's salvation. Man is stripped of all the pow r ers 
which make him a responsible being, his soul harrowed 
w 7 ith terrors, and the future illumined only by the 
flames which are to consume him, that his deliverer 
may seem more necessary ; and when the mind, in 
this state of agitation, in this absence of self-control, 
is wrought up into a fervor of gratitude to Jesus, it is 



DISCOURSE XI. 



273 



thought to be sanctified. This selfish, irrational grati- 
tude is called a virtue. Much of the loye, given to 
Jesus, having the origin of which I now speak, seems 
to me of no moral worth. It is not the soul's free 
gift, not a sentiment nourished by our own care from 
a conviction of its purity and nobleness, but an in- 
stinctive, ungoverned, selfish feeling. Suppose, my 
friends, that in a tempestuous night you should find 
yourselves floating towards a cataract, the roar of 
which should announce the destruction awaiting 
you, and that a fellow being, of great energy, 
should rush through the darkness, and bring you to 
the shore ; could you help embracing him with grati- 
tude ? And would this emotion imply any change 
of character ? Would you not feel it towards your 
deliverer, even should he have acted from mere im- 
pulse, and should his general character be grossly 
defective? Is not this a necessary working of na- 
ture, a fruit of terror changed into joy ? I mean 
not to condemn it ; I only say it is not virtue. It is 
a poor tribute to Jesus ; he deserves something far 
purer and nobler. 

The habit of exaggerating the wretchedness of 
man's condition for the purpose of rendering Jesus 
more necessary, operates very seriously to degrade 
men's love to Jesus, by accustoming them to ascribe 
to him a low and common-place character, I wish 
this to be weighed. They who represent to themselves 
the whole human race as sinking by an hereditary cor- 
ruption into an abyss of flame and perpetual woe, 
very naturally think of Jesus as a being of overflowing 
compassion, as impelled by a resistless pity to fly 



274 



DISCOURSE XI. 



to the relief of these hopeless victims ; for this is the 
emotion that such a sight is fitted to produce. Now 
this overpowering compassion, called forth by the view 
of exquisite misery, is a very ordinary virtue ; and yet, 
I apprehend, it is the character ascribed above all 
others to Jesus. It certainly argues no extraordinary 
goodness, for it is an almost necessary impulse of 
nature. Were you, my friends, to see millions and 
millions of the human race on the edge of a fiery 
gulf, where ages after ages of torture awaited them, 
and were the shrieks of millions who had already been 
plunged into the abyss to pierce your ear, - — could you 
refrain from an overpowering compassion, and would 
you not willingly endure hours and days of exquisite 
pain to give these wretched millions release? Is 
there any man who has not virtue enough for this ? 
I have known men of ordinary character hazard their 
lives under the impulse of compassion, for the rescue 
of fellow-beings from infinitely lighter evils than are 
here supposed. To me it seems, that to paint the mis- 
ery of human beings in these colors of fire and blood, 
and to ascribe to Christ the compassion which such 
misery must awaken, and to make this the chief attri- 
bute of his mind, is the very method to take from his 
character its greatness, and to weaken his claim on 
our love. I see nothing in Jesus of the overpowering 
compassion which is often ascribed to him. His 
character rarely exhibited strong emotion. It was 
distinguished by calmness, firmness, and conscious dig- 
nity. Jesus had a mind too elevated to be absorbed and 
borne away by pity or any other passion. He felt in- 
deed deeply for human suffering and grief ; but bis 



DISCOURSE XI. 



275 



chief sympathy was with the Mind, with its sins and 
moral diseases, and especially with its capacitiy of im- 
provement and everlasting greatness and glory ? He 
felt himself commissioned to quicken and exalt immor- 
tal beings. The thought which kindled and sustained 
him, was that of an immeasurable virtue to be confer- 
red on the mind, even of the most depraved ; a good, 
the very conception of which implies a lofty charac- 
ter, a good, which as yet has only dawned on his 
most improved disciples. It is his consecration to this 
sublime end, which constitutes his glory ; and no 
farther than we understand this, can we yield him 
the love which his character claims and deserves. 

I have endeavoured to show the circumstances 
which have contributed to depress and degrade men's 
affections towards Jesus Christ. To me the influence 
of these causes seems to be great. I know of no feel- 
ing more suspicious than the common love to Christ. 
A true affection to him, indeed, is far from being of 
easy acquisition. As it is the purest and noblest we can 
cherish, with the single exception of love to God, so it 
requires the exercise of our best powers. You all 
must feel, that an indispensable requisite or preparation 
for this love is to understand the character of Jesus. 
But this is no easy thing. It not only demands that 
we carefully read and study his history ; there is an- 
other process more important. We must begin in 
earnest to convert into practice our present imperfect 
knowledge of Christ, and to form ourselves upon him 
as far as he is now discerned. Nothing so much bright- 
ens and strengthens the eye of the mind to understand 
an excellent being, as likeness to him. We never 



276 



DISCOURSE XL 



know a great character until something congenial to it 
has grown up within ourselves. No strength of intel- 
lect and no study can enable a man of a selfish and 
sensual mind to comprehend Jesus. Such a mind is 
covered with a mist ; and just in proportion as it sub- 
dues evil within itself, the mist will be scattered. Jesus 
will rise upon it with a sunlike brightness, and will 
call forth its most fervent and most enlightened affec- 
tion. 

I close with two remarks. You see, by this dis- 
course, how important to the love of Christ it is. to un- 
derstand with some clearness the purpose for which 
he came into the world. The low views prevalent on 
this subject seem to me to exert a disastrous influence 
on the whole character, and particularly on our feel- 
ings towards Christ. Christ is supposed to have come 
to rescue us from an outward hell, to bear the penalties 
of an outward law. Such benevolence would indeed 
be worthy of praise : but it is an inferior form of be- 
nevolence. The glory of Christ's character, its pe- 
culiar brightness^ seems to me to consist in his having 
given himself to accomplish an inward, moral, spiri- 
tual deliverance of mankind. He was alive to the 
worth and greatness of the human soul. He looked 
through what men were, looked through the thick 
shades of their idolatry, superstition, and vice, and 
saw in every human being a spirit of divine origin and 
godlike faculties, which might be recovered from all 
its evil, which might become an image and a temple 
of God. The greatness of Jesus consisted in his de- 
voting himself to call forth a mighty power in the 



DISCOURSE XI. 



277 



human breast, to kindle in us a celestial flame, to 
breathe into us an inexhaustible hope, and to lay within 
us the foundation of an immovable peace. His great- 
ness consists in the greatness and sublimity of the ac- 
tion, which he communicates to the human soul. This 
is his chief glory. To avert pain and punishment is 
a subordinate work. Through neglect of these truths, 
I apprehend that the brightness of Christ's character 
is even now much obscured, and perhaps least discern- 
ed by some who think they understand him best. 

My second remark is, that, if the leading views of 
this discourse be just, then love to Jesus Christ de- 
pends very little on our conception of his rank in the 
scale of being. On no other topic have Christians con- 
tended so earnestly, and yet it is of secondary im- 
portance. To know Jesus Christ, is not to know the 
precise place he occupies in the universe. It is 
something more ; it is to look into his mind : to ap- 
proach his soul ; to comprehend his spirit ; to see how 
he thought, and felt, and purposed, and loved; to un- 
derstand the workings of that pure and celestial prin- 
ciple within him, through which he came among us 
as our friend, and lived and died for us. I am persuad- 
ed that controversies about Christ's person have in 
one way done great injury. They have turned atten- 
tion from his character. Suppose, that, as Ameri- 
cans, we should employ ourselves in debating the 
questions, where Washington was born, and from what 
spot he came when he appeared at the head of 
our armies ; and that, in the fervor of these conten- 
tions, we should overlook the character of his mind, 
the spirit that moved within him, the virtues which dis- 
24 



278 



DISCOURSE XL 



tinguished him. the beamings of a noble, magnani- 
mous soul, — how unprofitable should we be employed. 
Who is it that understands Washington ? Is it he, that 
can settle his rank in the creation, his early history, 
his present condition ? or he, to whom the soul of that 
great man is laid open, who comprehends and sym- 
pathizes with his generous purposes, who understands 
the energy with which he espoused the cause of free- 
dom and his country, and who receives through ad- 
miration a portion of the same divine energy ? So 
in regard to Jesus, the questions which have been 
agitated about his rank and nature are of inferior mo- 
ment. His greatness belonged not to his condition, 
but to his mind, his spirit, his aim, his disinterestedness, 
his calm, sublime consecration of himself to the high 
purpose of God. 

My hearers, it is the most interesting event in hu- 
man history, that such a being as Jesus has entered 
our world, to accomplish the deliverance of our minds 
from all evil, to bring them to God, to open heaven 
within them, and thus to fit them for heaven. It is 
our greatest privilege that he is brought within our 
view, offered to our imitation, to our trust, to our love. 
A sincere and enlightened attachment to him is at once 
our honor and our happiness, a spring of virtuous ac- 
tion, of firmness in suffering, of immortal hope. But 
remember, it will not grow up of itself. You must 
resolve upon it, and cherish it. You must bring Jesus 
near, as he lives and moves in the gospel. You should 
meet him in the institution, which he especially ap- 
pointed for the commemoration of himself. You 
should seek, by prayer, God's aid in strengthening 



DISCOURSE XI. 



279 



your love to the Saviour. You should learn his 
greatness and beneficence by learning the greatness 
and destination of the souls which he came to rescue 
and bless. In the last place, you should obey his 
precepts, and through this obedience should purify 
and invigorate your minds to know and love him more, 
" Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus 
Christ in sincerity. " 



NOTE ON THE FIRST THREE SERMONS. 



It was my intention to add one if not more sermons on the text, 
" 1 am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ"; but as they would 
have nearly filled the volume, it was thought best that they should 
give place to others on different topics. I have not however sought 
a great variety in my subjects. My principal aim has been to bring 
out and enforce a few great truths ; and I hope to give hereafter my 
views of other important principles. 

Some of my remarks may be thought to have an unfavorable bear- 
ing on Judaism ; but I generally refer to Judaism as existing in the 
time of Christ. This religion, as given by Moses and especially as 
expounded by the Prophets, had a spiritual element, which redeems 
it from the reproach of being solely or prevalently an outward, cere- 
monial service ; and when we consider that it was given to pre- 
pare the way for a revelation which was to enlighten and save the 
world, we shall see, that under the appearance of a narrow, local 
system, it had a vast and generous purpose, worthy of its Divine 
Author. 

In discussing the genuineness of the four Gospels, I was com- 
pelled by my limits to give the evidence in its most general form. 
I refer my reader for the details to Paley's chapter on the same sub- 
ject. That admirable writer has there compressed the most impor- 
tant parts of Lardner's great work. 

For the same reason, I could only give a few general remarks 
on the contrast between the Christian miracles and those of false 
religions. This subject is treated at large in Douglas's " Criterion," 
a book full of instruction and interest. 

I cannot refer to any work devoted to the evidence arising from 
the character of Christ, though it has been ably discussed in many 
discourses. 1 am told, that a book recently translated from the 
German, and published among us, entitled " The Plan of Jesus," 
by Reinhard, is a valuable accession to the Christian evidences. 

It was my desire in this note to enlarge on some topics, on which 
I may not have given my views with sufficient explicitness ; but 
my want of health disables me for such an effort. This cause has 
delayed the publication of the volume, and I ought to add, that it 
has prevented me from bestowing on several of the discourses the 
care which I wished and hoped to give. I intended to condense 
the two last discourses into one ; but my strength was unequal to 
the task, nor could I even make the slighter changes which are 
almost always needed in compositions prepared for the pulpit with- 
out a thought of publication. 

W. £. c. 

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